A Fire Doesn't Seek a Forest (It Burns it All the Same)
by Noa Alexandra
Summary: Lily Potter (single mother, accomplished mediwitch, newspaper-proclaimed madwoman) would do anything to keep her family safe. Braving Azkaban, denouncing the most powerful wizards in Magical Britain, fleeing to France, and hiding her son's identity are only the first steps. A tale of love beyond reason, sanity, magic, and death. cross-posted to a03
1. Birth, Death, and What Comes After Pt I

0.

_She dreamed she was the ocean._

_True peace came in the depths, where the world was silent. So deep that the light no longer shone, up was down and there was weightlessness in the crush of gravity._

_On the shores, the light of the distant sun lit water like fire, fire cold and sooth as glass. The light of ocean mirrors does not illuminate anything but itself: all else is shadow and silhouette. Winds and waves sounded like lost radios. Messages in sounds and bottles that would never reach those shores played the lament of minds forced apart._

_She dreamed she was the ocean, and through the cracks in the water slipped fragments. Past, present and to be, but she was the ocean, and oceans are not changed by the passing of time. The edges shift and the shores recede and what were mountains become islands, but what was ocean is still ocean._

_Her son, voice as shrill as seagulls, was the foghorn cradled in her arms. The siren sounding out the world; the sonar calling men as prey to lust and wrath. Others were only merfolk, curious and cruel but only merfolk; her son was sound in her arms, warmth that lit her shores._

_She dreamed she was the ocean, and there were whales that carried the weight of the world in her depths._

_A picture of the ocean hung on the hospital wall, but the air was still as too many deaths. Her son in the hands of a man that was not a man, that was more a man than the rest. He whose voice slipped in the cracks and tried to lure her to a line, to drag her to the surface._

_He was changing the words to the song. She reached out and took her son back into her arms, where he could swim her waters and be free. Rock-a-bye baby…_

_She dreamed she was the ocean, and her waters were calm, but never still. At sea, the baby's basket rocked, floating in the soft waves. At shore, what was sand became water, and water became sand, and again, and again. _

_Her son cried: he who held him did not know why. Her voice fell uselessly on the rocks, like the shells the gulls dropped were empty and distant. "Give him something to eat! Can't you see he'll starve if you keep letting the fish swim free!"_

_Depths couldn't teach her son how to float. He would surely drown in her ocean._

But you are not the ocean. You can swim him to shore.

_She could push him to shore, but when his tiny feet took to land and he learned to run and to soar, all her mighty oceans could not save him from the fire._

Lily. You can't keep dreaming. You are not the ocean, love.

_She found peace on the dark ocean floors, where the lost ships with journeys still held stories of promises—_

Let me be. You are not the ocean. Go to our son.

—_but there they would rot and rust and be buried, and she was the ocean, and her power was not her own, and while time does not change an ocean, oceans change the world in ways they cannot control._

Let go.

_And so the ocean became a selkie, and when she shed her skin she could carry her son safe to shore. And she brought with her the ocean, but she saw only the seas._

1.

Her own face stared up at her from a magazine, set carelessly on the top of the Healer's inbox on her paper-strewn desk. Lily stiffened, but her mentor, Healer Engelhart, was not the type of woman who would have chosen the magazine for herself. She was far too busy for _Witch Weekly_, and besides, she'd never trust a journalist to report her student's words accurately.

LILY POTTER REVEALS ALL! the headline, too big for its space on the page, proclaimed. EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH THE MOTHER OF THE BOY WHO LIVED.

Of course Lily had personally edited the article, but she was painfully aware of her youth. At twenty-one, most of the magical world still saw her as too young to fill the shoes fate had handed her. If fame had come differently, the witches' tabloids would be filled with slander. How thrilled they would have been to know that her son had been an accident—poor planning and a youthful fear that life was too short to pass the chance. Fate had intervened: Harry Potter would never be spoken of as an accident. Lily would make sure of that.

Healer Laura Engelhart, Director of Understudies and Third Surgeon, came in just as Lily made her move to flip the magazine over. Hawkish eyes missed nothing, but years of working in a hospital had given the Healer a good touch of tact. She said nothing of it as she hurried around her desk, pushing aside a few papers to clear space for the file she placed between them. "Good morning, Lily."

Though not, by nature, a kindly woman, the Healer was not so cruel as her reputation would rumor. She simply got to the point without the hassle of excessive friendliness. Lily loved her for it. Loved the way she never stuck her nose where it wasn't needed, but knew each of her students' personal situations, and checked in with her long-term patients regularly even when she hadn't slept in twenty hours herself.

"Hello, Laura," Lily replied. "Please, I've had enough of exchanging pleasantries to last me a lifetime. Let's get straight to the point, shall we?" 

2.

James and Lily Potter had been married in secrecy shortly following their graduation from Hogwarts. It had been necessary; they had rejected an offer from Voldemort himself, and that made them targets. The wedding followed a meeting of the Order of the Pheonix, and for a night and three and a half years they lived in a pocket of music, dancing, and joy that defied the times. The house they shared at Godric's Hollow was filled with good food and better friends, for a time, and even when the world squeezed them in too tight for all that, it held those closest to them, and soon, their son. And even when it was just Lily, James, and Harry, everything she could have hoped for in life was in that house.

And then it was gone.

It had taken them hours to pry Lily away from her son long enough to be sure they were both in no lingering danger. Her son, with the scar like lightning tearing down from the sky etched across his forehead. Her son, who as she held him tightly in her arms, as ready to die as James already had, had not uttered a single cry. She remembered the green light, which she had seen too many times before. She remembered the shrieking, revolting, wretched sound as Voldemort's body crumbled into nothingness. The fell chill, the icy blast that passed through her like walking through a ghost.

"They're not going to give him a trial," Remus said one day. How long had passed since they had moved her here, a closed room with heavy wards? How long had she been locked away with her son and an enchanted window to the sea? She did not know when Remus had come, or if he had been there the whole time, or if he was even there at all—but he had to be.

"Who?" she had asked. She did not know how long after. Time was difficult to track. The waves beating against the cliffs were too difficult to keep track when they were all, in the end, all part of one greater swell. But she had been too long at sea, and between _flashes of green and waves of ghostly chill_ she had heard Remus' voice, and that drew her out of the depths.

Remus, who had always been better at these things than the others, passed her a glass of clear potion and didn't ask about her sudden recovery.

"Sirius," he answered, trying and failing to sound matter of fact. She had forgotten what she was questioning, but he spoke on, and she anchored against his voice. "They've sent him straight to Azkaban for what he did."

"What he did?" she repeated. Harry began to fuss; she adjusted him in her arms and wondered when he had gotten so big. When she finally looked at Remus, he was staring right at her.

"Lily," he said, slowly. "James is—"

"Dead," she said. She tried to say. The word was like a clap of waves against the earth. Hollow. She stroked the fine hair on Harry's head. She couldn't think about James, about_ the green light and the man_—no, monster, who had taken her husband from them—

She cleared her throat, and urged her lungs to breath again. Remus was right there, Harry, in her arms. She grasped at the present as tightly as she could. "What does Sirius have to do with that?" She looked around, vaguely wondering where the man was. She was so used to him standing at Remus' shoulder, keeping an eye on him so he didn't look like—like this. Like he'd been through hell and only come out dragged along by a thestral.

The way his eyebrows pinched made his tired face look just as confused as she felt. His voice was faltering: "After—after everything? When Peter found him—he murdered him, Lily. Blew up the whole street—Sirius did—right in the middle of Muggle London."

"Peter," she said, vaguely. She wanted to sound cold, but she did not have the energy to feel angry, she just felt—tired. It had been Peter all along, and they had been too blind to see it. They had always overlooked poor Peter, no matter how they tried to make room for him in their world. He'd always been straggling after his friends. "Sirius does have a tendency to over-react, but…" She paused. "Why aren't they giving him a trial? It wasn't the right way to deal with—but the Death Eater Clause—"

"Death Eater Clause?" Remus echoed. "Lily, Sirius was working for Voldemort! He gave up the secret of Godric's Hollow and murdered Peter! People are demanding the kiss!"

"What are you…" Things finally started to fall into place, just as Harry woke up and started to cry. She shushed him gently. _When had he gotten so big?_ "Remus," she said as gently as she could. "Sirius wasn't the secret keeper."

She would not choke on it, their fatal flaw. She would not. They hadn't even known what Peter had done until the door started to shake as the wards began to fall. _Lily, take Harry—I'll hold him off—the green light through the frame of the door—_

"Lily." Remus' voice broke through the waves, and she opened her eyes. "Lily, what are you talking about?"

She tried to focus on his hands, but her eyes were still swimming—no, his hands were shaking. She was already reaching out with a hand to check his forehead. He was hot, but then again, he always was.

"We were afraid," she said slowly, "That they would use you to get to Sirius. He was at wit's end, trying to keep us, and you safe, and we couldn't ask you, in case they already had you, so we called Peter—"

"No—"

"—and asked him—"

"—_no—"_

"—and that night was—"

She cut herself off. The last of he will power flooding out of her. Harry, awake now, was grabbing at her hair. Remus had stood in the heat of things, and now stared down at her, eyes wide. Her vision kept blurring, and she realized she was crying—_green light and a cold air—_

"Lily, he's been in Azkaban for two months," Remus choked out, when he finally found his voice. "He's been in—"

Harry wailed, louder than before, and the both of them finally looked at him. Remus reached down and took Harry, bouncing the child against his shoulder.

"Two months?" Lily echoed. She could not—but Remus held Harry like he had done it a thousand times before, and found the bowl of food and spoon to feed him with.

"We have to tell Dumbledore," Remus was saying as he patiently helped Harry eat, ignoring the globs of food the child dribbled onto his shabby jacket. "He'll know what to do."

_Two months? _"Yes," said, Lily absently. "Is there a quill—I'll write him myself. Or maybe the Floo—"

"There's not one in here," Remus said, "and trust me, you don't want to go outside just yet." He pulled his wand out with his spoon holding hand and waved them both at her, sending bits of food across the white bedspread. Until that moment she hadn't realized it, but she knew exactly where she was now: one of the sealed rooms in the quarantine ward at St. Mungos. It was the closest thing the hospital had to a high-security room—indeed, there had been several fugitives awaiting trial mended in these rooms, just to the point that they were in no danger of dying prematurely before the aurors would swoop in to deposit them on the stand. The thought of it made Lily shiver, sending any comfort she might have drawn from the familiar location out the enchanted window.

She swung her feet out from under the covers of the bed, careful not to knock the writing materials Remus had conjured for her onto the floor, and found herself clothed in the simple garb that only long-term patients wore. "Remus, she said, her training nagging at her, "We should call a healer, shouldn't we? If it's been two months there are all sorts of tests they'll want to be running."

"We can, if you'd like," he said. "But there's only the emergency notice. They've been doing identity checks on everyone before they let them on this floor, in light of the attacks…"

"Attacks?"

Remus sighed. "They'll be a lot to catch you up on, Lily, but there'll be a nurse in here in fifteen minutes, and they won't give you the time to breath after that, will they? Lily, please."

She did not need to look at him to understand what Remus was asking—why he was asking—but she did. He was clinging to Harry as tightly as she had been, the minutes before. She wondered if this was how he had hoped to cope with everything, to try to take care of her and Harry and ignore himself, as he was so proe to do. But now, she realized, there was something like hope fueling his desperation.

_Two months?_

_The green light—take Harry and go!_

Her first attempt at standing did not go very far, because her legs seemed disinclined to obey her. She would have to ask the nurse later; Remus' answers would do little to explain the state she had been in for the previous two months, medically. She was not angry in the slightest—and, in fact, she was herself confused. Sirius had been in Azkaban for two months, and she was thinking about other things? Her anger finally reared it's head in her gut, propelling her to her feet, and on stiff legs she took the writing supplies to the small table Remus sat at, inking the quill and setting it to a parchment in a haste that defied her body's reluctance to move.

"There," she said, when the letter was composed. She blew the last of the ink dry and passed it across the table, where Remus regarded it wide-eyed, as though he had been handed the Holy Grail. She took her son back from him, smoothening the soft black hair away from the angry red scar etched across his forehead. It would mark him for the rest of his life, she knew. Would he be teased in school? Would he try to hide it under bangs, or wear it proud? Her throat clenched as she imagined him, a young James, and the realization—_the green light. Take Harry—_hit her gut. How revolting it felt to her, to sit here thinking of children when James was dead, Remus a wreck, and Sirius in Merlin knows what condition.

"Send it to Dumbledore," she said, trying to assure her friend that at least one thing hopeless could be salvaged before it's end. For once, she found herself doubting her own words. The feeling was new, and wholly unpleasant, so she swallowed it. "He'll know what to do."

3.

Remus briefly made a quiet escape in the flurry of activity that filled her room when they realized she was awake, but though the pair of them spent the afternoon only half-listening to the healers, they did not hear back from Dumbledore that evening. Nor did he arrive the next day, when the Minister of Magic and an entourage of faces she only half-recognized arrived to award Harry and herself Order of Merlin, Second Class awards, much to her confusion.

It was Remus, not Dumbledore, who explained that Voldemort had vanished, presumed dead, and that the legitimens who had looked into Harry's young mind had seen the impossible: a killing curse she had tried to shield him from had somehow rebounded off the child and killed the Dark Lord. No Dumbledore, head of the Order of the Pheonix, to explain that they were calling her son the Boy Who Lived, the Child of Light, as the other members were allowed in for brief, tearful visits. Or when she learned the that Frank and Alice Longbottom, despite all precautions, had been attacked as well, and were now two bodies in beds down the hall, minds lost to the torture of Bellatrix Lestrange. Or when she first left the room, and despite the security was set on by four plain-clothes journalists by the time she'd reached the end of the hall.

When two weeks passed and they hadn't heard from Dumbledore—even after several journalists had published quotes of her begging for Sirius' fair trial, and several floo calls to an empty office at Hogwarts—that it became clear to Lily she would be receiving no answer. What had started as concern at his absence had grown into cold fury. He was not so busy with his role as a member of the Wizengamot that he had not been spotted by various people in the Magical Villages. Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade, even Godric's Hollow—but no word to Lily or Remus or anyone else. Why he would not come to their aid, why, when he was a member of the Wizengamot, the magical world's justice system, did he not call for justice?

Remus waned as the moon waned, overcome, it seemed, by the guilt of letting Sirius waste away in Azkaban. The only correspondence that returned from the ministry promised the legal department would look into scheduling a trial when more pressing matters had been dealt with. Lily stopped reminding herself that Sirius may have killed Peter. Frankly, she was finding it harder to care, the more the reality of James' death set in—

—_a green light. Take Harry and—_

That's it," she said, setting down the _Daily Prophet_, the morning after the full moon. Remus had gone to the Coquet Island, uninhabited with winter, for the full moon. She could not transform the way James and Sirius could, and she did not trust to leave Harry with anyone else, not even the Order, but Lily could at least help the man find a safe place to change and offer a haven to recover. He was always hungry after the full moon, if Sirius' tasteless jokes were anything to go by, so she made twice their usual breakfast fare and pretended nothing was different as he sat at the table, dark circles under his eyes as he bounced Harry on his knee.

"Lily," he said tiredly. He knew that face. He knew what she had found in the _Prophet, _or what she hadent found, rather. "Don't do anything rash, whatever you're thinking of."

"Rash?" she echoed, slapping marmalade onto her toast.

Remus wasn't eating, really. Not for lack of appetite; he had scarfed down the first sausage alarmingly quickly for one of his small stature before his mind seemed to get lost in other things.

"I'm sick of sitting here doing nothing, waiting for someone else to set Sirius free. Hasn't every newspaper in the country—hell, the whole of Europe has been declaring me some sort of hero of light?"

"Well, yes, but—"

"Eat your breakfast," she said, taking a big bite of toast and chewing it with unnatural gusto. "I'll show them what it means to want justice."

"What are you going to do?" Remus asked. He sounded too tired to be afraid of her, though in the ten years since they had met he had learned that an angry Lily was not a force to take lightly. "We tried Dumbledore. What are you going to do? March into Azkaban yourself?"

"Exactly," Lily said, and took another bite of her toast as though she would show her force of will in the simple act.

Remus gaped. "But—"

"Eat your breakfast," she repeated, throwing her own toast back on to her plate as she stood. Her cloak was flying towards her almost before she had her wand out to summon it.

She left Remus with his mouth hanging open stupidly, the child on his knee beginning to cry "_Remy, Remy!"_ at the sound of the door slamming shut behind her as Lily flew out of the apartment.

4.

They had chosen a spot in a suburb of Muggle London to hide out from the press that seemed determined to document her son's every breath, and so Lil had to walk a bit before she reached the apparation point closest to her. The walk did anything but clear her mind. In fact, it mostly made her agitation fester and grow. She was angry—angry at Dumbledore, who had abandoned them; Angry at the magical world, for only seeing what it wanted to see; angry at herself, for trying to rely on a system, like a naïve child. She couldn't be a child anymore. She was twenty-two years old, a widowed, single mother with lives to save and people to protect. There was no space in her life for blindness.

She reached the apparation point and traveled to the alley beside the Leaky Cauldron, donning her cloak and putting up the hood. She slipped inside behind a family, and stuck to the shadows of the room as she made her way around to the floo. It was public, so long as you had your own powder, which she drew out from a pocket inside her cloak.

She travelled first to her mentor's office at St. Mungo's. Azkaban would not be connected to the public floo, but Lily had been to Azkaban once before. In her training at the hospital, the year following her graduation from Hogwarts and shortly after marrying James, the Healer she was shadowing was called to the prison after a suicide attempt by one of the inmates. She was not sure if every floo in St. Mungo's was connected to Azkaban, as the one she had left in had been in a different ward. Though her mentor was not in office, it would not hurt to try, so she drew out some fresh powder, whispered _Azkaban_, and whirled away.

As her feet set down in the distant fire, she could feel the cold sinking out from her bones, as though they had split and the marrow had spilled out like ice water. The aurors, standing startled, were wearing extra cloaks, and though the room was warm enough in the physical sense they still shivered.

"Sorry," said one of the two aurors, a short man. He didn't look sorry, the way he had his wand out. "Sorry, but we aren't expecting no one jus' yet. Who are you, then?"

She regarded him. Not a member of the Order, and clearly a guard of little use from the way his hands shook. They'd been following the trials in the newspapers, when they weren't trying to connect with people they hadn't seen in years, to get Sirius free. Azkaban was full—Azkaban, which had not been full even in the purge of the 1860s, even after the fall of Grindlewald. As such, guards had been pulled from anywhere they could be found. He probably had an Auror's license, rushed through so they'd have another pair of boots filled. But he was probably one of the hundreds who had been in hiding, too scared to face the reality of conflict.

The girl—and Lily remembered her, a younger Ravenclaw when she had graduated—recognized Lily first and slapped her partner's hand down. "That's Lily Potter, you idiot!" she cried. Lily sighed and stepped out of the floo.

"Ow! Merlin," said the man, rubbing his arm. He had an intensely fake Australian accent so strong it was almost comical, like an American movie character, though he hadn't bothered to change his speech patterns to match his—what was it, a disguise? "What's that for?"

"Sorry, Lily—I mean, ma'am," the girl said with all the dignity one could muster when wearing a muffler indoors. She pulled it away from her face a bit. "Don't mind this idiot. Are you here for Sirius Black, then?"

She was surprised, but then again, they had been trying the papers for help. "Yes, she said, racking her mind for the girl's name. "I am, Babette."

"'Cause we read the papers," the girl went on. "They've been saying he's a _murderer_. But I remember him from school, don't I? An' he was never like, oh, Mal-Finger, was he? And I was telling John—wasn't I, John—I was telling him—"

"Babette," said Lily. "I'm here for Sirius, and I don't really care what you've read or said."

"Well, thing is," said Babette, "We've been we aren't supposed to let anyone out, 'cept on auror's orders, you see? And—you're not an auror, are you Lily? No, I didn't think so, you went to the healers, right? That's what the papers said—and if you're not an auror or some such we can't exactly just let him out, can we? Mad-Eye'd have my head."

"Babette," Lily said, "You're not an auror yourself, are you?"

"Well, not strictly speaking, no," the girl said. "But I've started my training. Why do you ask?"

"They've still put you on guard duty? Here?"

"Well, yes, 'cause there isn't exactly an excess of aurors, is there?"

"So you're just a trainee, but you can still move people in and out, under orders?"

"Uh—"

"Technically, Babette, you can, can't you?"

"Well yes," said Babette, "But only if it comes from a higher-up, right? And Lily, you aren't—I know you were head girl and all, but that doesn't mean nothing now, does it?"

"Well, said Lily, "Sirius Black has been an Auror trainee for almost three years now. That puts him higher up than you. And I'm willing to bet that if you ask, he'd be glad to give you orders to let him free."

Babette lit up. Her heart was in the right place, but Lily expected it was more the clever work-around that excited her. Ravenclaws always loved using logic to cheat the system, so long as there was no actual cheating going on. That was a different matter entirely.

"Babs, you can't!" her partner—John—cried. "We're guards, we can't just go letting people out! Especially dangerous murderers."

"Oh, shut your trap, John," Babette said crossly. She was already moving across the room to open the door. Lily took a few steps after her. "What do you know about dangerous murderers? You've been hiding in Canada since you left school. Only thing that'd hurt you in Canada is the wildlife, if your ugly mug didn't send 'em screaming. 'sides, I've talked to Black, haven't I? Not exactly the murderous sort."

"N—no! I won't shut up!" John said, as fiercely as he could muster. He put his wand up again, pointed at Lily, but his hand was shaking so violently he would be more likely to his the ceiling than her. Lily sighed. He reminded her of Peter, in the early years. Trying so hard to stand up for himself—so hard he would easily do more damage than good.

"Look," she said, "Why don't you go make your rounds? You're obviously not going to let anyone else know that I'm here, are you? So no need to go concerning yourself over it, right?"

"That's exactly what I'm going to do!" John cried. He turned to hurry past her towards the floo, and Lily, as soon as he passed, whipped out her wand to do a quick petrification spell.

"I didn't see that," Babette said, turning back as John hit the floor. "I really didn't. I was facing the other way. I wouldn't see you, say, turn his hair pink, if you wanted to."

"Every second we waste here Sirius is out there, at the mercy of those foul creatures," Lily snapped. "Now hurry, Babette. We've got to help him. Can't you see?"

"But you—you'd never just spell someone and leave them behind! You were always the one keeping James Potter, and—and Sirius Black in check! Weren't you?"

"Sure," said Lily. "And someone has to keep them alive. And that's what I'm here to do."

"Right," said Babette. She reached out for the steel handle of the heavy door, but paused and looked back at Lily. "You don't happen to know the patronus charm, do you? 'cause I amn't hardly any good, and the laterns don't do much, really…"

Lily silently raised her wand. The patronus charm had been one of the first upper level charms she'd learned. Dementors had always bothered her. Their very existence—

—but as she held the wand aloft, she realized she could not cast the spell. There was a spark of happiness, a bit of light that you had to focus on in order to cast something so pure. She couldn't find it. She didn't even know where to start looking. She put her wand down, and shook her head.

Babette sighed. "Aw, well. Come on, then. Give's me the creeps, but there's nothing to be done."

The icy cold was worse when they left the guardhouse. It wasn't just the fire they left behind, it was the carms woven into the stone to keep what little cheer could be found in such a place. Babette took two lanterns from their hooks in the wall beside the door, and tapped them each with her wand until they glowed with a silvery light. It was a poor imitation of a patronus, but better than nothing. She handed Lily one and led the way down the stone hallway.

It had been bright in London, a beautiful day for January, but here the sky was always dark, and within the walls little light could permeate the darkness. Despite their gentle glow, the lanterns cast harsh shadows in every direction, the type that as the child Lily had been before she knew about magic beyond her own intuition had once thought of as ghosts. It was a silly notion—ghosts could not be found in such lights—but Lily couldn't help but shudder at the thought of all the spirits that must haunt this place.

The fortress had been built long ago, by a dark wizard intent on luring muggles in for his own cruel purposes. From then on it had been haunted not by their ghosts, but Dementors. Wherever such foul creatures had come from, they lived in the worst of places, those filled only with pain and grief. It was true, they fed on happy memories, but their infestations occurred in places where there was no joy to be found to begin with.

Lily shuddered to think of Sirius in such a place. Sirius, whose life had been such pain, from being born into as archaic a family as the Blacks to the loss of his younger brother—even if he would never say it, his family had always held such sway over the condition of his heart. He had always been kept afloat by an addiction to joy. He bonded tightly to his friends, never mind anyone he dared pursue a relationship with, and found the thrill of a good prank among the most appealing joys in the world James had always urged him on, of course—but this was hardly the place to think of James.

They walked on for what seemed like far too long, without running into another soul. It was several minutes before Lily's eyes adjusted to the light well enough to realize that they walked down a hall lined with cells. She held up her lantern a bit closer to one, peering in as she walked by. The faces inside were wide-eyed and gaunt, staring out at her but seeing nothing but the light. One lunged out from the other side, reaching through the bars to try and grab the lantern. Lily held it just out of reach.

"Careful," said Babette. "We're not supposed to let them get too close to the light. They'll get addicted."

"Addicted?" the prisoner spat through the bars. The hair on their head was long and scraggly, skin leather and traced with grime. Lily couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, but the face was so inhuman she couldn't help but wonder if such identity as sex or gender would even matter any more. "Addicted?" the prisoner rasped again. "Yes, pretty girl, bring the light a bit closer, yet? Let us feel the light, get addicted. Let us, if you will."

"Now you stop it, Anders!" Babette Snapped crossly. "Lily, come on. We're not far yet."

But Lily did not move. She was too busy looking into the bulging eyes. The cataracts were covering the pupils with a milky glow. But as she leaned in—a bit closer—the other hand swept out of the cell and snagged her shirt.

Above them, the dark sky gave a wretched shriek.

"Lily!" Babette shouted, from what seemed like a great distance. A dementor swooped down out of the sky, closer—

—and Lily jabbed the end of her wand into the hand that had grabbed her. It was only a spark charm, but the prisoner wailed like they had been shot, and retreated back into the shadows so quickly they might as well have apparated.

"No! Go away!" Babette was shouting up at the sky. Lily, centered again, looked up into the sky and saw that it was not one dementor, but four, and there were three more trailing closer. Babette waved her lantern, and the fell creatures pulled back. "There's nothing to see here," the girl called. Her voice cracked with nerves. "Go find someone else to bother, you miserable beasts!"

They seemed to stare down at the pair of them. No, that wasn't accurate: they seemed to be focusing directly on Lily. It was impossible to say, what with the hoods and lack of humanoid features, but the longer they hung there, the more Lily was certain. She held the lantern closer to her face and stared back, thinking of Harry.

Eventually the dementors turned and floated away.

"Merlin," Babette swore on the breath she'd bee holding. Lily kept the lantern up, watching the retreating shadows. "That was a close one. Nasty buggers. What were you doing so close like that, Lily? Don't you realize that they're dangerous, them in here? We're in ward seven, where the real crazies go. They threw Black in here after he was found laughing. Hysterics, of course, but they didn't figure that."

Lily slipped her wand back into the holster in her cloak sleeve. "What was that?" she asked, nodding towards the cell.

"Matriem Anders. Got the block after she killed both her children, fourteen years ago, now."

"No that's not—her eyes, Babette. What happened to her eyes?"

"Oh, they get like that, after a while," Babette said lamely. "I don't know if there's a reason why. They don't need to see much in here, do they, though? Just what daylight gets in, an' us walking by. Now can we go?"

Lily nodded, and they hurried on. It was a short trip to Sirius' cell from there, one more left turn. His cell was at an end to the hall. There was a long arrow-shaft-like windown in his wall, casting a thin strip of light across the cell and onto a stone ledge built into the opposite side. There, huddled up in a ball, was a figure clawing at his own hair. Lily winced.

"Open the door, Babette," she said quietly.

"You'll want to give it a clang first. They can be aggressive, you know…"

"Sirius won't hurt me," Lily said. "Open it!"

Reluctantly the girl tapped her wand on the heavy lock. It clicked, and the door swung inwards. Lily stepped inside, as reluctantly as Babette had been to so much as open the door, and held the lantern out between them.

"Sirius," she called softly. The figure did not move. "Sirius, it's Lily."

"Lily?" a rustling voice rasped back. Slowly, as though he had been huddled in position for a lifetime, the figure lifted his head to look at her. Lily swallowed—it was Sirius, definitely, but he looked several years older than the last time she had seen him. The bright glow that once filled his defiant face had vanished, leaving his skin pale and semi-translucent as it stretched across his bones. The laughter lines that normally creased his face were now sharper, sharp like wrinkles that stood against his youth. They were only twenty-two, but he could have passed as Lily's father, like this.

She took off her cloak slowly, stepping towards him. She didn't know how much damage had been done, sitting alone in the dark, prey to the dementors' hunger for nearly three months. "Yes, Sirius," she said, "We're going to get you out of here."

"Lily—it wasn't—it wasn't me!" he begged. He lunged at her the way Anders had, but Lily caught him before he could grab her too violently, setting the lantern on the stone slab. "I didn't—it was Peter—Peter! He—he—he—"

"Sirius," Lily said. "I know. We're getting you out of here." She eased him back down into a sitting position, and with one hand she removed her cloak, keeping a grip on Sirius' arm with the other. "Don't worry," she soothed, placing the cloak over his shoulders. It covered his frame nearly completely. Lily was a good six inches shorter than Sirius, and she was a slender woman, but he seemed to swim in her cloak. His wide eyes were searching her face.

"Lily," he rasped, "Harry—he—"

"He's safe," she said. "He's with Remus. Everything is okay, Sirius."

He frowned, but seemed to accept her answer.

"Lily," Babette said, "I'm all for touching reunions, but I do need that order, you know. For posterity's sake. That and I can't cast the spell releasing him without it."

"Right," said Lily. "Sirius, Babette is an auror trainee. She's a few years behind you, so you have seniority. So if you tell her to let you free, she can legally let you go."

Sirius opened his mouth, shut it again, and then opened it a second time, pulling back the slack corners slightly into something like a grimace. "Lily Evans," he admonished quietly. "Are you breaking the rules?"

"Bending them, Sirius. Now tell her to let you free."

He looked past her, to where Babette lingered in the door. "Uh—" he rasped, and cleared his throat a bit to speak up louder. "I order you to let me free, Babs."

She tilted her head, but waved her wand anyways, and whatever spell she was casting seemed to work. "Good enough for me," she said. "Now that'll be your name off the ledger, so if we can just hurry along before anyone notices…"

Lily helped Sirius to his feet. It wasn't easy—she almost thought the cloak would be too heavy for him—but once he had his footing he seemed to find his strength. She handed him the lantern, too, and Sirius took it wordlessly. They stepped out of the cell and followed Babette back down the hallways towards the guard tower.

1.

Healer Engelhart tapped the file on the desk between them.

"So," she said, "Are we going to talk about this?"

"You can just tell me, you know," said Lily. "I can handle these sorts of things, can't I?"

"You can handle much. Not everything, though."

Lily frowned. "Is something wrong?"

"No," said the Healer. "But you already know the answer. I'm curious, then, as to why you're here."

Lily blinked, then slumped back into her seat. It was as though the weight had lifted out of her gut and settle onto her shoulders. "It really is true, then," she whispered. Her hands settled on her gut, grasping the fabric of her blouse subconsciously. "Somehow…"

"Lily," the Healer said, when she settled into silence, "You don't have to go through with his, you know. There are options. You should not feel obligated to anything."

Lily gave her a sharp look, and sat up again. "No," she said firmly. "If I've ever had to do anything, it is this. For Harry, if not James."

"What about for yourself?"

"For myself?" Lily echoed. She paused. "Is it a boy or a girl?"

"Have a look," said the Healer, letting the question slide. Lily gave her a long look before reaching out to grab the file.

She opened it with a tremble in her hands. There, in the standard print of a medical quill, was proof: she was pregnant. Her second child was due in six months, August. That would make Harry two already. But in the long run, he would hardly know that a time existed without his little—sister. A girl. James had wanted a girl.

"If you're going to go through with this," said the Healer, "You can't keep up with all this excitement, Lily."

"Excitement?"

"Giving press conferences. Harassing the ministry. Not two weeks ago, you broke into Azkaban and kidnapped a high-security prisoner!"

"Sirius is innocent," Lily said automatically.

"So I've heard. But dementors and babies are a dangerous combination. The damage that could be done to a child…"

"No more dementors," Lily agreed. "And no more press conferences." She set the file down beside the magazine, which she pointed at with her pinky finger. "That was supposed to be the end of it. I can hardly have reporters breathing down our necks all the time and expect Harry to turn out all right, can I? I told you last time—"

"So you're still planning on leaving."

"Now more than ever. No one can know that Harry Potter has a sister."

"Why ever not?"

"Have you seen the people on the streets? We go into Diagon Alley and we're lucky to make it ten feet before they're on us."

"They don't mean any harm. You're a hero, Lily."

"Hardly. I'm a survivor. So is Harry. There's a difference." The lines on her face set. Since James had died, her once light features had grown still. "He deserves better. No child should be idolized for their pain."

"So you want to take him away from it entirely. Will that solve anything, in the long run? Won't the stories only become more fantastical?"

"Perhaps," Lily said, "But to keep him safe? I would cross worlds, Laura. He's all I have left."

"And your friends—Remus, Black?"

"Them too, of course," she acquiesced. "But they're different."

"You could live without them."

"If it came to it. Yes."

"But they're worth enough to go storming Azkaban?"

Lily sighed. "I could leave them behind, yes. It doesn't mean I want to, or that I should abandon them now. Remus is dear to me, and Sirius loved James as dearly as I did. They were like brothers, Laura, I couldn't let him rot away, blamed for the murder of his best friend. Haven't you seen what Azkaban does to people?"

She thought back to the eyes of the prisoner that had lunged at her, and shuddered. The image had come to her in nightmares several times isnce; the eyes finding home on her face, or Sirius', or Remus', or Harry's. Desperation and doom.

Of course, that was between the other nightmares. _A green light—_

"Where will you go?"

"An apartment in Paris, or elsewhere in France. Sirius has written a cousin to make some inquiries. We've been living in muggle apartments here; as long as they're warded enough most wizards can't find them. You'd be amazed how intimidated some people are by muggles. If everything works out, the children will live there, until it is time for Hogwarts. If that is still an option, at that point."

"Where else would you send them? Beauxbatons?"

"If it were safe," she said. "I want to apply to transfer to the French Mediwitch Institute. It won't be easy, but once I get citizenship…"

"You want me to write you a recommendation, don't you?"

"Well," said Lily, "Yes. Unless you don't think I meet their standards."

Engelhart snorted. "Of course you do. But I won't, not until well after this child is born. Your education is already piecewise enough. It can wait until after."

"Of course. I'm not leaving until then, either. I think she has to be born on British soil, for Hogwarts to automatically accept her. And we've still got things to sort regarding Sirius' innocence, and he needs our help to recover. You should have seen him…"

"I can imagine," said the Healer. "But no charging places for your daring rescues, or barring people likely to hex you from entering…"

"I can't promise that, but I will do everything in my power to keep this baby safe. She's just what Harry needs. He lost his father, Laura, and Sirius and Remus can only be so much. Sirius wants to get back to his auror training, and Remus is on the hunt for a job."

"Well, don't place too much on this baby. She'll just be one child. And she's no Harry Potter, to borrow that horrible phrase. One girl can't solve the world's problems."

"Neither can one boy, but they'll expect that of him. I won't let them ruin him, Laura. I won't."

Lily stood. She had gotten what she came for, and though she hadn't known what result she had wanted she would carry out the one given to her. "Thank you, Laura," she said, as her mentor stood to follow her to the fireplace. "I'll be in contact with you soon, I think. No one can find out about this."

Engelhart sighed. "I'll try whatever I can to help, Lily, but you won't make it easy. You never do."


	2. Birth, Death, and What Comes After Pt II

6.

Hollis Maryanne Potter was born the 15th of June, 1982, in a small room of a flat in Muggle London.

It was the third apartment Lily had held since finding out she was pregnant. She kept to the parts of the city that the muggles considered dangerous, for she had little to fear of being mugged when her clothing was so extensively worked with notice-me-not charms, and the look of the neighborhoods was all the better to keep the magical world away.

Both of the other apartments had been equally inconspicuous. At the first, she had tired of the daily screaming matches between the neighbors that drifted in the through the windows to upset Harry. The second, she had become convinced that the old man living on the third floor was a squib, and that was too close to the Magical World for comfort. This apartment had its own problems, of course; almost everything had been broken beyond what a _reparo_ could mend, and if she were to so much think about leaving the door unlocked there would be idiot muggle teenagers trying to figure out why her door was so much harder to open than the others in the complex. But, by May it was far too late to move again.

Sirius and Remus made sure to visit as often as they could. They had much less time on their hands, with Sirius back at work for the ministry, but even so, one or the other was over nearly every day. The only other person she remained in contact with was Healer Engelhart, and no matter how dear the Healer held Lily, she was hardly a social creature.

When Hollis was born, it was just Lily and Engelhart in the room. Sirius had been called away on a training mission—as he had claimed when Harry was born, though he had come home smelling of a pub—and Remus had been pacing so frantically that Lily had snapped at him to take a walk. She did not care he had made it no farther than the front room, frankly; her attention was on more pressing matters.

The moment Hollis was in her arms Remus was back through the door, Harry in tow. The boy was drowsy-eyed and altogether quite confused—it was the middle of the night, Lily realized, when she looked at the clock. He clung to Remus' leg and buried his face in the soft cloth of his trousers. Hollis, on the other hand, cried and cried in a wail that made Healer Engelhart cringe. Lily had never heard anything so beautiful.

Of course, within two weeks the joy of a newborn had not _entirely_ worn off, but it had certainly faded some. There was little sleep to be had with two children in the house. Harry grew endlessly fascinated by his baby sister. If she were in her mother' or uncles' arms, he was perched a few feet away, staring at her while she stared back.

While he was for the most part, if possible, a calmer child than he had been before, he was also much more fretful than any of them when Hollis' mood turned sour. The moment she started crying he was on his little feet, even if he hung back a ways, minding the instinct that he could do no good getting underfoot to the adults. He reminded Lily so much of how James had been, when he had been born. Neither parent had been ready, though it was said no one ever was. James had always fretted when something went wrong. He was the first to swoop Harry in the air and could nearly always have the baby boy giggling in a heartbeat. But in the rare moments that Harry had been upset, James took on the face of a lost puppy—or, if Harry was in his arms, a deer stuck in the headlights. Though James wasn't there to freeze up over Hollis, Harry and Sirius were just as hopeless around the upset child, leaving Lily and Remus to most of the difficult moments.

As for Remus—he swore that he had been fired again, but Lily suspected he had quit his job to look after Harry. Normally she would have told him off. Remus spent far too much time putting others before himself, and while that balanced nicely with Sirius' much less altruistic personality, in Lily's opinion the skinny, shabby man could do with a bit more self-interest. She could not protest, however, when she was far too tired from waking up at odd hours to meet Hollis' crying demands to deal with a two-year-old. Remus took Harry out when she was especially tired, and she did appreciate that. If Hollis would allow it, she sat down for a nap—or tea, at least.

One such interlude, she had just put the cream in her mug when there came a knock on the door. She looked at the clock. It had only been fifteen minutes since the pair had left, but perhaps her son had forgotten to use the restroom. It wouldn't be the first time. She stood up slowly and meandered to the door, opening it lazily.

The man outside her door was not hand-in-hand with her son, and while he was wearing a patched coat, he was not Remus. Not in the slightest. Lily reached for her wand, only to realize she was not wearing it. She cursed her negligence. Even she had gotten soft, in the wake of Voldemort's disappearance.

"How did you find this place?" she demanded, but Severus Snape spoke right over her.

5.

The fire flared, and out of it stepped Lily Potter.

She had not brought her son. Dumbledore had requested her to; he had only seen the boy briefly, on his unhappy visit to the house at Godric's Hollow in the wake of the disaster. He had not been able to make sense of the scene, which was odd, for him. Normally he could recognize magics at work. Yet from the wreckage of the house, a piece seemed to be missing, a piece which inhibited his understanding of that night.

So when he had requested Lily Potter visit him, he had requested she bring her son. He wanted to examine the scar running jagged across his forehead, likened by some to a lightning bolt. Perhaps, he thought, an understanding of the scar would engender an understanding of what had rent the Dark Lord Voldemort from his body.

She had not brought her son.

"Lily," he said, standing from his desk and opening his arms in greeting. "I am glad to see you."

"Professor," she responded. Her eyes darted around the circular office, taking in the instruments and portraits that kept it full.

"Please, have a seat." Dumbledore conjured her a red armchair on the other side of his desk. She settled into it, apparently oblivious to the way she let her eyes slip closed as she sunk into the cushions.

The young woman looked exhausted, frankly. There were dark circles under her eyes, she must have lost at least a stone since he had last seen her, and the red hair she had pulled into a side braid was lackluster and in need of a strong health potion. Her eyes, when she opened them, were pink around the rims, a startling contrast with the green of the irises. Her son, Harry, had inherited her eyes, if his memory served him well. He wondered if the boy would look so distrustful when he came to Hogwarts.

"Well? What is it?" Her voice was rough as her appearance; Dumbledore wondered if she had been sick recently. It had been over a month since she had snapped out of her waking coma, and surely she had been compromised, health-wise, following that.

"I never properly offered you my condolences following James' death," he said, keeping his voice soft. "He was taken from you far too soon."

He watched the wave of pain pass tension through her body, shoulders briefly rising before she wiped herself of expression. It was a new façade for her, blankness; as a student, and even following her entrance to the Order, she had always been open and loud in expressing her emotions.

"Yes," she said simply. Her eyes wandered away from him, looking past, out the windows beyond his desk. "And Harry will not have a father."

"Although I imagine he will have plenty of love at home, with Mr. Black and Mr. Lupin?"

The four men—James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew—had been inseparable in their youth, fashioning themselves a brotherhood and naming this group the Marauders, the worst-kept secret of their time. Upon graduation, it seemed, they had remained close, and when the young Potters had gone into hiding they had chosen Sirius as their secret keeper. That was, at least, what they had told Dumbledore—and he had lauded it as an excellent arrangement: Sirius had always been fiercely loyal to his adoptive brother, despite his speculative upbringing.

Or, that is what he had thought, before being called to the scene at Godric's Hollow.

He was not fond of being caught without full disclosure.

"No thanks to you," Lily said. Her voice was calm, no trace of emotion, but her eyes were narrowed and she shifted marginally forward. She did not use the armrests, but kept tucked into herself, as though protecting her body.

"Yes," Dumbledore said softly. He thought back to his conclusion, when he had written her for a meeting, that he was not in the wrong for failing to assist her crusade of the liberation of Sirius from Azkaban. He had been in France at first, then Germany, assisting in the coordination of forces rooting out local Death Eater offshoots, and returned to England only to meet spies and attend trials. "I am sorry Sirius had to suffer like that, Lily. I really am. And now that I am back, I was hoping you might explain to me what happened?"

She scoffed, reaching to flip her braid back. "What happened was that you told the aurors that Sirius had been our secret keeper, and that he must have betrayed us."

"That was what I thought to be true."

"Well, it wasn't. We had feared that—it had recently become official, that Remus and Sirius were seeing each other—"

Dumbledore blinked at that, but at his age keeping his expression schooled the way she had to fight to was easy. Remus and Sirius? He did remember them being discussed in the conference room, a running bet between McGonagall and Slughorn. But his attentions, in those days, were less for the cares of students and more for their potential and character.

"—and we were afraid that Voldemort would try to use Remus to get to Sirius."

"I see," said Dumbledore. "And so you switched to Peter."

"Yes. On Halloween."

Dumbledore studied the back of his hands, rested on the desk before him. They were old hands, now, and the protruding veins never ceased to bring him back to earth. He would expect anger at that Potters, for taking the matter into their own discretion, failing the plans he had laid. But Lily did not deserve to bear blame; her husband was dead, and she had been in such a shock it could have very well left her in the Janus Thickley ward of St. Mungo's for good, as he understood it. Likewise, Remus and Sirius could not be blamed for their love, any more than Lily and James' love and the birth of Harry could be blamed for James' death.

"And so Mr. Pettigrew was the mole all along," he summarized. "I am sorry that a friend could betray you like that, especially one so dear as Peter."

"That's how people are, isn't it? You put your trust in them and they fail your expectations. That's how it always is."

"That one so young should feel as such…"

He remembered his sister's death, and feeling much as young Lily did now. People had been nothing more than a disappointment to him—himself most of all. It had taken him much longer than three months to get over his paralyzing grief, though perhaps his depression had been less physically apparent than Lily's. Still, he imagined he could understand her cynicism: even after all these years, he was occasionally crippled with self-doubt.

Old as he was, he was not disposed to accept just anything unlikely at the drop of the wand. Perhaps that had led him to ignoring the letters he had gotten from the young mother; he had only scanned them well enough to realize she offered no insight into the mystery of Voldemort's apparent demise and had set them aside, brushing past all other matters to devote focus to the problems at hand.

The problem at hand now was a woman who had decided she could not trust him. She could not trust him, with good reason.

"What did you call me for, really?" Lily asked. "It wasn't to give your condolences, or you could have simply come by yourself, or owled."

"I did consider visiting," Dumbledore admitted. "However, it would seem your current abode is being rather carefully warded."

"Rather carefully?" She laughed: a joyless sound. "If it's kept under your radar, than I say I'm doing more than keeping it 'rather carefully' warded, Professor."

"Under my radar?"

"A muggle expression."

He wondered how much that could tell him, whether it was something remembered from her childhood or a more recent turn of events that brought the turn of phrase so easily to her tongue.

"Well, I am certainly impressed, Miss Potter. And glad that you, and your son, are keeping safe. That is, as it happens, the matter I wish to discuss with you."

"My son?"

"Yes. You haven't brought him with you, I've noticed."

"No," she said. "I don't bring him to places with people I don't trust."

He closed his eyes, a quiet sigh slipping through his lips. "Of course. Although, I can promise you, solemnly vow, that I would never hurt young Harry."

"Perhaps not intentionally." Opening his eyes found hers staring right back, her head tilted slightly to one side. "But we have come to realize you are good at hurting people indirectly."

"Oh?"

He would not deny that. Yet he was unsure how she had concluded he did so more than others, when in fact dealing such damage was an unavoidable part of being human. One might buy the last copy of a book at the store, only for another customer to come in a few minutes later and languish that the one book they needed was gone. Or he might send an Order member on a mission, only to receive information shortly after that they were walking into a trap. There were certain unavoidable damages one dealt on the world, living.

"Yes," she said. She seemed relatively eager to explain his faults, which clashed with Dumbledore's idea of Lily Potter: caring, loving. "You move people like pawns, and then, when they fall, have another to move into their place."

"I'm not sure I follow," he said, voice even softer.

"I'm sure you do," she said. "The Order could have done plenty without having so many of us killed, couldn't it have, Professor? Had we not so blindly been following your lead."

"You think I deliberately put people in harm's way."

It was a harsh accusation, and her words were cutting indeed. Dumbledore had always valued his leadership to the Order, to try and know it's members personally, to try not to ask too much of them. Of course members had died: it was war. It was unfortunate reality, that when you had seen so many come and go as he had, Death was part and parcel to life.

But she was too young to know that. The Potters had only graduated Hogwarts three years ago, and had been both so young at the time, young and eager to join the Order. He had allowed them, dependent on their beginning training for their professions of choice. James had chosen the Auror Academy; Lily, St. Mungo's. He had done his best to give them something of a future beyond the war, as so many young people were inclined to get caught up in the present and think of nothing else. He had done his best for them, to try and make sure they had lives outside of the fight.

And she claimed he did nothing but move them as pawns?

"No," she said.

He lifted an eyebrow.

"I don't think you deliberately put anyone in harm's way. You spend too much time avoiding direct conflict for that."

He dipped his head. Direct conflicts, he thought, were best left to the aurors trained for battle. The Order had the best of intentions at heart, and they were all fine wizarding folk, but they were a rabble, not an army. He may have accepted Death, but it did not mean he would forgive the blood on his hands if he put the people trusting him on the frontlines. Those who were lost in the smaller missions were painful enough to accept.

"We think you are a blind man, a blind man who couldn't see when he was making the same mistakes over and over again, who didn't feel enough guilt to learn from his mistakes and fix his tactics."

"The thing about declaring someone to be blind to reality," he told her, "Is that they have no way to reasonably defend themselves."

The hands in her lap came up to cross her chest. Her lip curled. "And that's the thing," she said. "Your automatic response is to defend yourself, without even thinking back on your actions."

He dipped his head again, looking back at his hands. There was a mole on his index knuckle that he had a way of forgetting about until he happened to glance down, the sort of small, unimportant information that one puts out of their mind to make way for less trivial matters. In the war, he had always pushed the Order forward, not leaving time to mourn the fallen, to lose momentum. That was the way it had to be.

"And so," the woman was saying, surely taking his silence as a victory for her part, although he couldn't imagine it a victory she wished. "I believe you have something of mine."

He knew instantly what she referred to, as that, in fact, was the real reason he had called her to Hogwarts: the invisibility cloak that James Potter had lent Dumbledore when they settled on Sirius as secret keeper. Of course he had intended discussion on the matter of Harry's future. He could see, however, that such a conversation was at this point futile. It was best left for when her anger with him had subsided, an end to which the return of the cloak would hopefully propel.

But he hesitated.

There had been good reason for him to keep it, after all. By now he was all but convinced: this was the Invisibility Cloak of legend, the cloak which had belonged to Death itself, one of the Deathly Hallows.

The goal of uniting the three Hallows—the Invisibility Cloak in his hands, the Elder Wand on his desk, and the fabled Resurrection Stone—had died with his love of Gellert Grindelwald, all those years ago. Still, when James had shown him the cloak, he had to know. He could not leave the matter unchecked. Even now, now that he knew the cloak a Hallow but that the temptation had cost James his life, he was hesitant to give it back. He forced himself to draw it from his desk and hand it to the woman, and she took it with shaking arms.

"I am sorry, my dear," he said as the young woman stared at the shimmering cloth in her hands. She stroked it slowly. "The thought that I was the one to deny you of this one protection… I wish it could be undone."

"So do I," Lily said, voice just as soft. But then the trance seemed to leave her, and she stood from the chair. "But the past is unchangeable. What is done cannot be unwritten."

She turned to walk back to the fire.

"Miss Potter," Dumbledore called. "Please, sit back down. I would like to discuss your defenses. Voldemort—"

"Is not dead," she said, looking back over her shoulder. "Of course he isn't. Anyone who believes otherwise is a fool. But my defenses are none of your concern, not any more."

"Lily," he implored. "I want to help keep you safe! And help your son, whose childhood will surely be altered by this tragedy."

"Too bad," Lily said. She turned back around, holding out the cloak. "See, Professor, that's the thing: you say that you are sorry. Sorry. You say that you are sorry you took away our last line of defense, you are sorry James died—but even now, you are doing the same thing you always did with the Order. Pushing forward like you have made no errors, like you have a _right_ to declare what happens next with no reflection on what happened last. And not all of us are so naïve, Professor, to follow you blindly. We are not going to take orders from you any longer. Not now. Not when Voldemort returns."

"We?" Dumbledore echoes. "Who makes up 'we'?"

"Everyone who has seen your failure," she said. Her hand dipped into the pocket of her pants, and came out with a handful of floo powder. Strange, considering that he had a bowl on his mantle, as most wizards do. Surely her distrust did not run so deep she would not even use his floo powder?

"I am sorry, Lily," he said again, as she stepped back. "For what it's worth."

Her lip curled, and she dropped the powder. She did not state her destination.

Dumbledore did not sit back down, but crossed the room to where Fawkes, the phoenix, stood on his stand. The bird had been reborn recently, while he was out of the country. It was only suiting; the end of an era. He ran a finger down the creature's neck, and it chirped at him, leaning in to his touch.

He could only hope that Lily Potter could find it in her heart to forgive him, before her son was old enough to be affected by such poisonous anger.

6.

"Lily, I swear," he said frantically, "I know Dumbledore must have said—but hear me out! I didn't know—"

"Severus," she said sharply. "I don't know what you are talking about and you need to leave. Now."

"I didn't know it meant you—I swear—"

That caught Lily's attention. There were only so many things he could be referring to, in such a frenzy.

Making up her mind, she reached out and grabbed the man by the collar of his oversized jacket, pulling him inside and hastily slamming the door shut. It was odd—like a scene straight out of her—their—childhood. The particular situation had the potential for far greater brevity than any of their childish drama would have, however, and there was not the resolute belief that she would be able to forgive Severus when he said his piece. Not anymore.

She crossed her arms across her chest and faced him. "Explain."

"I had just been—just been doing what I was supposed to—I didn't even know you were pregnant for months, months—and I begged Dumbledore—and I begged _him_—"

"You begged Dumbledore." Though his words were too fragmented to make much sense of, there was a sinking in her gut, the echoes of the waves in her ears. Funny, she thought, how when you've realized so many people closest to you had betrayed your trust it is still possible to feel the sting of hurt from someone who you have no reason to trust anyways. Someone like Severus.

"I didn't think the Dark Lord would listen," he said, "Even though I begged him not to—so I sent Dumbledore a message. I told him that he thought it was you, and that you were in danger—I begged Dumbledore to protect you—"

Though the words were falling on her ears, Lily was hearing none of them, only the steady roar of a tumultuous ocean. Severus' meaning could always be found between the lines, if you listened close enough. Lily wished she hadn't listened. Wished she had turned him away at the door, taken Hollis and left.

"You told him," she whispered hollowly. "You told Voldemort the prophecy."

The truth, it seemed, was dawning on both of them. For a moment Severus looked confused, then mortified, his pale skin flushing with dark red spots. "I didn't know!" he insisted. "Lily—I would have never—never—put you in his path, I swear! I begged—"

"You told Voldemort the prophecy," she repeated, and looked up at him, her nostrils flaring and lips twisting into a snarl. "You told Voldemort! And now James is dead. _Dead, _Severus! And what about him, what about Harry? Not a word of begging for either of them, I imagine, because _no_, Severus Snape doesn't give a damn if it doesn't cross his mind. You fucking—"

"Dumbledore didn't tell you," Severus said. Of course he did. Because even when it was Lily suffering his single-minded idiocy, he couldn't focus on anything but what he was directly involved with.

"That fucking asshole told me many things," she said, "But he failed to mention you. Funny, maybe he at least had the decency to be ashamed of making a deal with someone of your degeneracy. I should have saved my scorn for you, not him!"

Severus flinched, and perhaps if Lily had not been in such a state she would not have said such things. But she was angry—livid—the cabinets were starting to shake and the light bulb's glow had shrunk back in fright, and Severus too seemed to cower.

"My son," Lily carried on, "No longer has a father. Because of you! What are you going to do about that, you bastard? He's somehow the most famous boy alive, and doesn't even understand why—can you even imagine how horrible it will be? Can you sympathize with the pain of someone outside of your own skull?"

"Lily, I tried to—"

"I don't give a shit what you tried to do, Severus," she snarled. "Dumbledore _tried _to protect us, and look what happened. He would have let me ignorant of this, too, wouldn't he? So you could come slinking back in, the battered victim?"

The tea she had left on the table burst, sending shards of glass and milky liquid in every direction. Severus spun around, wand out, immobilizing it in an instant. The silence seemed to descend like an iron wall between them, and time seemed to stretch out until, from what seemed like an impossible distance, Hollis cried out.

"Get out," Lily said quietly.

"Lily, I—"

Her jaw worked as she pressed her teeth together. Hollis' wailing made the apartment's stifling air seem filled with sudden urgency. "Get. Out."

A knock came on the door, and Severus whirled about again, wand at shoulder level. Lily was standing at the door, so she merely turned to slam it open, revealing Remus crouched down over the two-year-old Harry, who was trying to hold back tears. "Harry tripped and hurt his knee, can you—" the man started to say, before he looked up and saw Severus standing behind her.

Lily turned without a word and swept by the intruder, beckoned by Hollis' wails. Severus seemed as immobilized as the tea hanging in the air behind him, staring at Harry, who stared right back, though his bright eyes were watering and his knee red with blood. For a moment, Severus seemed to act unconsciously, lowering his wand to point towards the boy, but Remus, seeing that, stepped between them, drawing his own wand and facing the man without a word.

At last Severus seemed to return to himself, blinking, and his eyes came up to meet Remus'. His face pulled back into an awful grimace, and he tucked his wand away as he swept out of the apartment, oversized coat billowing out behind him as he made for the stairs.

In the kitchen, the fragments of the glass fell to the floor.

* * *

><p>AN

Thank you all for your support! I'm glad to see there are so many of you still reading new works in the fandom.

I was going to post chapters on Mondays, but I think Sundays work a little better for me, so here this is. As you can see, chapter length is a little bit variable, due to the way this story is formatted. The "chapter" after this is quite long.

If you have any comments or questions, feel free to ask! Reviews are the fuel that keeps editing enjoyable. (And trust me, there's editing going on, even if you still see typos here and there. My first draft had Lily losing three stone instead of one. Oh dear.) You can also ask to my tumblr—username thenoacat—or review on AO3, where this story is being cross-posted.

One final note - the name Hollis, the nickname for which is Holly, I definitely got from the story the Never Ending Road. Once it was in my head, it stuck. It is a very long, well-written, and still updating story, and I encourage all of you to read it if you are not already!

Thank you!


	3. An Old Road Pt I

9.

Far from the troubles of Magical Britain, a dusty road wound through the French countryside. At one end, it merged with the main street passing through a small village; far in in the distance, like a spot of shadow on the horizon, sat the dark manor house. But it was far away.

Two children were walking down the road. One was tall and the other short, but both had dark hair and tan skin lingering with the glow of summer. It was autumn, as late as October, and even that month was nearly spent. But the pair of children were, as children often are, in a different place, and a different time.

The shorter child, a girl with pigtail braids tied with blue ribbon bows, was thinking of a house in London with a warm fire in the kitchen and laughter running up and down the stairs. The taller, a boy whose orderly appearance was threatened by wind and rainclouds hanging low on the horizon, was back at the school, earlier that day, in the yard where the children played after lunch time. They were both focused on the other, in a roundabout way, but neither was to admit it for a long, long time.

They had always spoken together in English, ever since he was five and she was three and they had moved to the country and started to romp the village with the local children. It was their way of keeping secrets. There were larger secrets to keep than what they might be having for dinner or when they might be visiting their uncles across the channel, but the pair of children knew better than to speak of magic in front of any muggle. Their mother had utterly forbade them from so much as caring too intensely for a card trick or muggle illusion. So they spoke of silly things, when they felt like annoying the others. Or they had, before.

Holly Jeannot, as she was called in school, had recently started her first year of muggle education. Before their mother Lily had taken her to the day care in town, but she had turned six over the summer, and never had any child been so excited. Her brother went to the school already, after all, and she was loath to accept that he could possibly have anything she did not. There had always been an unspoken rule in their little family: Hollis would never be lonely. Until they had left the apartment in Troyes and her brother had started school, they had always been together. The logical solution to their separation was, of course, to go to school herself, but no matter how she begged she would not attend until she was six.

Her excitement for school had died within a week of starting classes. Her brother, who all the village kids called James, was the type of student who sat in the back of the room and no one really knew. If they knew him for anything, it was because he was 'the British kid'. That was among his year mates: no one else cared.

Holly, on the other hand, was the type of child who everyone knew. She, too, was known as 'the British kid'—at least to those outside of her year. Classes were divided, and she could not go abandoning her friends in the recess hour, so she only saw her brother twice a day: as they walked to the village to wait for the bus, and as they walked home.

But they still spoke in English together, especially when there was something important to say.

"Who was it?" the boy asked, for the fifth time if not the hundredth. He liked to think he was Harry again when he spoke English, not '_James Jeannot'._ That was all a game, and he did not treat his sister like a game. She was more important than that.

"I told you, Harry," Holly insisted. "No one. I broke it myself."

"El said it was Claude," Harry said.

"Claude who?"

"Claude the red-head. You know, the one from my class. A townie."

She did not say anything to that, which meant he was right. Harry sighed. He'd known some of the boys to pick on the younger kids, but why his sister, of all people? He supposed it was because she was a brat, but he did not like them thinking of her that way. She was a brat, but she was also his sister.

And they certainly should not have broken her toy.

It was a stupid thing, really; plastic rubbish Sirius had sent from London. But Holly had clung to her horse like a baby to a blanket. The first day of school she had thrown a tantrum when the teacher made her leave it in the cloakroom. The second day she stubbornly insisted that she hadn't cried at all, but held onto the horse the whole way home. And now someone had broken it. Harry wouldn't even have heard, but when they rode the bus from town to the village one of her friends had tried to comfort her, despite Holly's attempts at a brave face.

"He's a git," Harry proclaimed finally.

"Who?"

"Claude. And he shouldn't have broken it. It was wrong."

"Harry," Holly said, "Just leave it alone, won't you?"

But Harry would not leave it alone. "The teacher didn't do anything?"

"Harry—"

"Then I'll do something."

"Harry!"

"What?" he said. "He broke your toy, Hollis. That's _wrong."_

"And—and beating people up is mean!" Now she did look close to tears.

"I didn't say I was going to beat him up," Harry muttered, though he considered the idea now. It was an entirely ridiculous image. Claude was a good four inches taller than him, anyways. Sure, Harry was fast, fast enough to get away from the other boys when they started a tussle in the yard, but he'd never hit someone and probably couldn't land a punch if he tried. Unless he used magic, like in one of those shows on the telly that pretended you could do anything with magic you could imagine. That was just stupid. And mum would kill him.

"Harry, you can't!" Holly whined.

"I'm not an idiot, Hols," he said. He sighed again and put his arm around her shoulder for a minute, which made it difficult to walk but seemed to get the six-year-old to pay attention. "He'd—he'd wipe the floor with me."

"Ye—yeah," said Holly, wiping her nose. Harry rolled his eyes. Only his sister could go from crying to insulting that quickly. "You're a wimp."

"You can't say things like that," he said, letting go.

"Why not?"

"'cause I'm your older brother, that's why," he said. "And I'm _Harry Potter_, right?"

That made his sister giggle, and he couldn't help but join in.

They were nearly to the mansion by then, so the children raced down the dirt road, Harry running just slow enough that his sister wouldn't notice. He liked the way he could feel them pass through the mansion wards. It was like slipping into a bubble, and on the other side the grounds were alive with magic. The pixies living in the gates blew spit bubble as they ran through. To the muggles, had they not always found themselves remembering the list of things they were avoiding whenever they considered approaching the manor, the grounds would have been in appalling condition. To the children, it was wonderland.

Their mum's car sat outside the gate on the last bit of road, but past the stone arch the grass reached Harry's knees in the shortest spot. It was filled with tangles of wildflowers, and creatures both magical and not. Uncle Sirius preferred them keep it that way. He said his parents would have hated it, which made him grin the way only spiting his parents did. Harry liked it because, when he looked out from his window on the second floor onto the wild grass and crumbling walls, it was like a scene straight out of one of his books.

It was also the one place that Lily let them truly run free. There was no pretending magic did not exist inside these walls, and no danger of a stranger or bad wizard coming to take them away. So they could run around until sunset, if it were warm enough and she were in a pleasant enough mood.

Today, however, Lily Potter was standing out on the porch. Harry slowed down as she came into view, though Holly surged forward faster than before. "Mum!" she shouted. "I beat Harry!"

"Yes, Hollis," Lily agreed. "Look how fast you are!"

The girl tossed her school bag up on the porch and circled around back towards her brother, arms stretched out like an airplane. He rolled his eyes, but followed closely after his sister when she headed back towards the house.

"Hi, mum," he said.

"Hello, Harry," Lily replied. "How was your day at school?"

Two years earlier, on Halloween as well, Lily had greeted Harry much the same way.

7.

She took him inside, and they had gotten dressed up in robes Sirius had sent from London. They had spoken that week about the event—a gala, she called it, at the Ministry of Magic. Harry didn't know what was so special about that, but he had been excited to go into the magical world in Britain. It had been years since they moved to France, and he had only seen the wizards of London in short glimpses over holidays spent at his Uncles' home. Getting ready, however, proved to take far longer than he would like.

"Harry," his mum said sharply, giving the six-year-old boy's hair a tug. "Pay attention."

"Powerful wizards," he said, his voice flat with boredom.

"Yes," she said. "To them, you are the Boy Who Lived. Which means…"

"I have to be on my best behavior," he recited, flipping the page of his book. "Will there be other kids there?"

"Most likely, but no one you should spend too much time with. I want you to stay at my side at all times. There will an apparation ward up, no doubt, but I can still keep you safe."

"But it's a _party_," Harry pointed out. Sometimes, he had learned, you had to point out things like that to adults. "Parties are supposed to be fun. Like Jean's birthday party. That would have been fun."

"Jean's father is a bigoted old ass."

"What's 'bigoted'?"

She sighed. "Well, I've told you, some wizards are mean to others just for being muggleborn."

"Yeah, but Jean's a muggle. Not a wizard."

"Well, some muggles are mean to others just for having different skin, or for being from a different place, or loving someone… different."

"Like Siri' and Rem'?"

"Yes." She brushed his hair in silence for a minute, and Harry got reabsorbed with his book. Both minds caught up in their own worlds, they started when the fire suddenly glowed brighter.

Sirius and Remus stepped out of the floo.

"You're late," said Lily sharply, putting away her wand, which had somehow appeared in her hand alongside the brush.

Harry jumped off the stool and ran to give Sirius a hug. The tall man picked him up and spun him in the air, as effortlessly as he had when Harry was a baby. "Hey-a, Harry! Did you shrink?" Harry giggled as he was swept back down into his Uncle's arms, and Sirius began to tickle him. "You look like a fluffed penguin, little man!"

"Sirius!" Lily admonished. "You'll mess him all up."

"Oh, lighten up, Lily," Sirius said. He set Harry down, ruffling the hair she had styled so carefully into a haphazard poof. "Isn't he supposed to look a mess? James always did."

Lily sighed, but she set down the brush and crossed the room to fix Sirius' tie. "Honestly, you'd think between the two of you one would know how to do a tie properly."

"Well, of course we do," said Sirius. "It's just we're so much better and getting them undone…"

She punched his shoulder—really punched, hard enough to bruise—and turned to Remus. "Hollis is sleeping already, thank Merlin," she told him, slipping the ring off her middle finger and passing it to the smaller man. "I gave her a dose of sleeping potion, but this is charmed for if she wakes up. She's been climbing out of bed and tearing the paper off the walls. Honestly, I think she's more like James than any of us. A right terror."

"Well, she shouldn't be a problem if she's asleep, then," Remus replied. "It's only when James was awake that you had to worry." He looked down at Harry and winked. "And how's the Boy Who Lived feeling this evening?"

Harry rolled his eyes, a habit he'd picked up from reading. The Boy Who Lived was, between the four of them, a ridiculous story for little kids. And he wasn't a little kid. He was already Six Years Old, after all. "Aren't you coming to the party, Remy?" he asked.

"No. I don't think they'd like me much there—I'm not famous enough, you see. And I don't look good in funny dress robes, anyways."

"Remus doesn't know what he's talking about, kid," Sirius said. "He's absolutely delicious if you get him in good robes. Of course, I like you better _out _of your robes, love—"

"_Sirius_!" Lily said again. Sirius laughed. "It's not funny, Mister. Harry's only six. He doesn't need to listen to that sort of crap."

"At least I'm not the one swearing."

"For once!"

Remus cut in gently, as he usually did when Lily and Sirius started arguing. "Come on, you two, aren't you supposed to be at a fancy party sometime this evening? And Lily—I don't think I've seen you dressed up so nicely since your wedding."

"Yeah, if James were here…" said Sirius, and suddenly he swept her off her feet the way he'd picked up Harry. Lily shrieked as he spun her around, making her dress flutter in the air. Harry laughed: his mum's face was almost as red as the hair that fluttered at her cheeks. "He would have done that," Sirius finished, satisfied. He put her back down.

This time, Lily was too embarrassed to punch him.

She pulled out her wand and attempted to summon her cloak across the room, but it swirled dizzily through the air and landed halfway. It wasn't her usual navy cloak, the one she wore to the hospital; this one was a soft black leather lined with grey fur. She swung it around her shoulders and picked up the matching one Harry had left on the stool, fastening it under her son's chin.

Sirius was giving Remus a hug, so they had to be about ready to leave. Harry wondered if he could get away with bringing his book. He doubted it.

"Alright, then," Lily said, taking Harry by the shoulder and guiding him to the fireplace. She kept her firm grip as they stepped into the flames, which tickled his ankles but were not hot at all. "Remus, send a message if anything happens. Sirius—hurry up."

8.

Harry hated travelling by floo. He preferred it to apparition, which was likely to upheave his most recent meal, and portkeys had a way of mixing up his limbs to odd angles, but with the floo he usually ended up covered in soot. Crossing between the continent and England was a particular trouble, as the speed gathered usually threw him to the next fireplace with enough force to send him flying out to the room beyond. On the rare occasion they took the floo anywhere, someone usually had to go ahead to catch him.

This time, however, Lily kept her hand tight on his shoulder, so they landed upright together. His ears still rang with the twisting pressure of travel, and sudden boom of the voice announcing them made his head ring with the words—HARRY POTTER, THE BOY WHO LIVED, WITH MOTHER, LILY POTTER!

The room Lily firmly guided Harry out of the fireplace into was the largest the boy had ever seen. He knew they had come to the Ministry of Magic in London, and of course that meant grand, but here were floors of marble and a ceiling so high he wasn't sure it was there at all. The floor was lined with fireplaces, flashing green as magic folk stepped through, and the announcing voices echoed against the stone.

Harry was so busy craning his neck to peer into the arched windows of offices above at first that he did not notice the way so many witches and wizards turned to stare, but when he finally looked down, there seemed to be eyes from every direction. His mum seemed to float forward, in a sphere of oblivion that did not extend to her son. Harry had once heard her telling Remus how much she hated the way travelling in London meant subjecting herself to strangers' attentions. He hadn't known why it made her so angry, but now he began to understand, and wondered at how she could look so at ease.

Sirius caught up to them scarcely a moment before a pudgy man in orange robes embroidered with pumpkins came forward. "Lily! Harry!" the stranger bellowed. Harry didn't think he'd ever seen the man before, but then again, most people could recognize him with his hair all messed up like his dad's. The glasses helped too, Remus always said. He didn't get out much, but when he did, all fussed over to look like what his mum said was the 'Harry Potter' look, there were always people who recognized him.

"Director Fudge," Lily said coolly. "A pleasure to see you again."

"The pleasure is mine, my dear!" the man boomed, looking around as though expecting the crowds to laugh with him. Few did, but they seemed to relax, turning back to their conversations. Harry, studying the embroidery on the man's cloak, failed to notice the way several groups seemed to drift closer.

"And why, Harry," the man said, looking down at him. "Don't you look like your father! We've heard that, of course, but it's been years since we've seen you here. You don't even remember me, do you?" He looked hopeful. "No? I'm Cornelius Fudge, head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Do you know what that means?"

"You run the world," Harry answered solemnly, with as much volume as he could muster. Fudge started, then laughed and clapped a beefy hand on Harry's open shoulder. Lily's grip on the other side tightened.

"Not quite, my dear boy! But that's a good one—run the world—Have you seen Dumbledore yet, Lily? He said he was looking forward to seeing you."

"We just arrived, Fudge," she reminded dryly. "But I'm sure we'll run into him, if he's looking for us."

"Of course, of course. Couldn't avoid the man if there was one of those muggle thingies—what do they call them? Force-walls?"

"Force field," Harry corrected. In matters of Muggle comics, he was much more confident. "And those don't actually exist."

"Right," said Fudge, conceding in the way that adults do that means they really don't concede at all. Harry was dismayed; sci-fi was already his favorite genre, but it was clear the man had no more than a passing fancy. "Force fields. Well, not that anyone would want to avoid Dumbledore. Charming man—Barty!"

As Fudge turned to call out to someone, Lily steered Harry past his turned back, reaching out to pull Sirius along with them. "—nasty old—Lily! Let me—"

"Not now, Sirius," she hissed. "Now—Minerva! Delightful to see you again."

The woman she called out to, and older witch dressed in tartan robes with greying hair pulled into a tight knot on top her head, turned away from the wait staff offering drinks. Her face was traced with sharp creases, but despite her fierce look she reminded Harry so much of one of the grandmothers in the village he could not help but feel more comfortable in her scrutiny than in Fudge's bizarre familiarity. Her face seemed to lighten as she caught sight of Lily approaching, and she swept forward to embrace her.

"Lily, dear," she said. "It's been too long."

She looked next to Sirius. "And Mr. Black. Still causing trouble, I hear."

"Of course," Sirius said, with a regal bow that made him look halfway respectful. For Sirius, that was a first.

"And Mr. Lupin is still keeping you in order, of course," she added dryly, "Or Lily would be marching into Azkaban every other day to save your hide."

Lily laughed. Harry, on the other hand was confused: generally Sirius and Azkaban mentioned in the same breath were not laughing matters. But the woman peered down at him.

"Mr. Potter," she said gravely. "Looking just like your father, of course. When I have you, I won't be tolerating any such nonsense from you, I'll have you know. Mr. Black and your father were trouble enough for one lifetime!"

"Harry, this is Professor McGonagall," Lily explained. "She teaches transfiguration up at Hogwarts."

He blinked. It was strange to think of this woman teaching his parents when they were in school, having just started it himself, but then again it was always strange for him to try and imagine his mum as a kid. Everyone always called her young, but to Harry she was always his mum, and that made her eternally an adult.

"Hello," he said, when he realized it was expected. "I'm Harry."

"Yes," the woman said, and for a moment she looked like she was going to smile. Instead she looked back up at Lily. "Albus is looking for you."

"He can go stuff himself," said Sirius, earning a punch on the arm. But Lily didn't disagree. Harry didn't know who Dumbledore was, either, but he knew she had used those very words more times than his Uncle.

"I have no desire to see him at all, Minnie," she said. "You can tell him that. Maybe he'll listen to you"

"I highly doubt it. But Lily, don't you think it's time to forgive him?"

Lily sighed, then looked down at Harry and leaned in, quieting her voice before voicing her next thought.

Harry huffed. It wasn't _fair. _His mum always _said_ she would tell Harry _anything_, but then she kept her voice quiet for conversations like these, and it wasn't his fault he was only half her height and couldn't hear a thing! He stood on tiptoes, pushing against his mother's hand to try and make out what they were saying.

But suddenly Sirius rounded Lily to take Harry's other shoulder. "Come on Harry," he said, smiling oddly. "Enough with these silly old grouches. Let's find our spot at the dinner table! If there's something these stupid events get right, it's the food."

"Sirius—" Lily cut short as she looked at the man. No, not at him, Harry realized; past him. Harry looked over his shoulder. There was one man that stood out in the crowd, an old wizard with a ridiculously long white beard, who somehow wore brighter orange robes than Fudge, who he was speaking to. When his mother let go of his shoulder, he looked up and realized he had missed yet another silent adult conversation. She looked down at him. "Stay with Sirius, love."

Harry was pulled off before he could even say goodbye to the Professor. His mum always told him to properly say goodbye, but Sirius _had_ always been the rude one. He also walked fast enough that Harry had to run every few steps to keep up.

"Look, Harry," the man said when they were a short ways down the hall. "Can you see the fountain?"

"What fountain?" Harry asked. He looked around, but all he could see were the strange robes the crowd was dressed in. Even in the magical international district tucked away in Hong Kong, which his mum had taken him to the year before, he had never seen such a mix of bright clothing. It was as dramatic as a scene of a muggle movie, where the Americans could be wearing just about anything as though it were perfectly natural.

"Here," said Sirius, and he lifted Harry up onto his shoulders. There was a moment of confusion—Sirius' normally lose hair was slicked back into a ponytail, and it got caught on Harry's cloak—but when Harry was settled he could see all the way out across the hall. And there, across the hundreds of heads, was a golden fountain.

Among the many figures that formed it, one was a wizard whose wand seemed to be shooting out a stream of bats instead of water. They swooped close to the pointed hats and poofs of hair, and vanished into the shadows of the ceiling. Though he still could not see the actual ceiling, now that he was a bit closer he could see that about three levels up huge spider webs were draped from wall to wall. He could not imagine how large the spiders that made them would have to be. Between Harry and the fountain were several long tables, lit by rows of Jack-O-Lanterns lined along each. Alternating with the glowing pumpkins were baskets filled with pumpkin pastries.

It was, of course, Halloween, and while that meant little in the French countryside in Magical London no extravagance was spared. No extravagance except, that is, the spiders that had webbed the ceiling. Those, luckily, were nowhere in sight.

Sirius weaved his way through the crowd, pausing now and then to greet—or, more often, insult—several people. Harry, caught up in the excitement, grinned unabashedly waved at several. For some reason, that made many of the elderly witches and wizards giggle. It was strange, he thought, how most of them seemed to be the same age as Sirius' mum. (He'd only met Mrs. Black once before she'd died, but that had been enough for Harry to determine she was a right old bat. Sirius always said worse.) But while he'd thought of Mrs. Black as old, he had never considered Sirius or Remus or even his mum as being particularly young. Now, when he looked down at his uncle Sirius looked youthful, compared to most of the witches and wizards here. To Harry he looked like a young pirate captain, or a prince—or a pirate prince—out of one of his books. The thought made Harry laugh, but then he had to duck as a bat swooped close to him.

"Careful, Harry!" Sirius said. "Hols would be terribly mad if we had any bat collisions."

Harry giggled more. His sister was especially protective of animals, even though, at four, she couldn't identify them properly by half. But then he tugged on Sirius' ponytail. They weren't supposed to talk about Holly: she was a secret.

Sirius swooped to the side in a dramatic response to the tug, and Harry had to cling to his head not to fall off. They straightened up when someone else called Sirius, and Harry had to dodge another bat. It seemed the closer they came to the fountain, the lower the creatures flew.

At last they reached the long tables, and Sirius walked along close enough to let Harry see the placards on the plates. Each was written in terribly spindly writing that would have made his schoolteacher yell. The tablecloths, Harry could see, seemed to be made out of black spider webs, dotted here and there with chocolate animals caught in them.

The baskets on the tables were filled with pumpkin pastries, as Harry had expected. Sirius leaned over to grab a small one, and passed it up to Harry when they had gotten upright again. "Don't get crumbs in my hair, you little rascal," he said. "Oh, look, Maram Grey is sitting here. Haven't seen her since school. Silly girl, always got her charms mixed up. Oh, and there's the Douglases. Haven't seen Bert in a few month, I thought he'd gone on a holiday."

Harry mostly tuned out Sirius' rambling, being far more interested in the pastry. He did try not to get any in Sirius' hair, but still a few bright orange crumbs speckled his ponytail. Harry finished the pastry and licked his fingers clean, and was about to pick the crumbs from his uncle's head when he found himself lifted from the man's shoulders. They were right at the front of the table, and when Sirius set him down so he was standing on a chair he could see there, on the plate before him, his own name on the place card. His mum's was on the last chair at the front, and Sirius' just to his left.

"Look, we'll have the best shot to throw food at Fudge," Sirius said, pointing to the high table. Harry tried to look scandalized, but couldn't resist a laugh. His mum would throw a fit if she heard Sirius' suggestion. Unfortunately, her idea about Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, involved a lot less rule-breaking than Harry or Sirius really liked. Still, he had promised to be on his best behavior, which meant even if Sirius did start anything, he had to sit by looking all Lily-like and disapproving. And, of course, apologizing to anyone that Sirius pranked, because Sirius Never Understands Propriety But We Will Always Take The Higher Ground.

Sirius pointed out the different figures in the fountain. The centaur, he said, was particularly inaccurate, because—

He was cut off by another greeting, and with the seats around them filling with people all trying to get his attention never explained. Harry had to say hello to a lot of witches and wizards, most who seemed to greet him like they had known him his whole life. He had only met a handful of British magical folk in his life. His mum had promised to take him to Diagon Alley at Christmas, but that was still a few months off. Most of the wizarding people he had seen had been while travelling, and even then Lily tried to avoid busy times. Some of the people greeting him Sirius smiled at and insulted, and those were the ones Harry knew he liked, so he smiled and relaxed and let his uncle do the talking. If Sirius just said a vague hello, Harry was polite, the way his mum wanted Harry to be. And if Sirius was rude, Harry was polite, because Sirius had a habit of disliking people strongly even when they might not have done anything. His mum hadn't told Harry that one; he had noticed it himself. He would say it was an adult thing, because his mum was the same way, but he'd never once seen Remus give a stranger the cold shoulder.

Finally Lily slipped into her seat. Her face was red as her hair again, but this time it was because she was angry. "You have crumbs in your hair," she hissed at Sirius as she sat down.

"That bad, huh," Sirius said, tapping his head with his wand so the crumbs fell out and onto the floor. He ruffled Harry's hair, and Harry grinned apologetically, but Sirius' attention was still on Lily. He didn't even look down.

"I can't believe him," she said. "After all this time you'd think he'd have realized, but—"

Fudge had reached his seat just after her, and tapped his goblet with his wand. It rang clearly across the hall. "Hello, hello!" his voice boomed over the crowd. It seemed to come from everywhere, not the man looking small in front of the fountain statues. "And Happy Halloween!"

There was a thunderous scraping of chairs as people hurried to sit, a sound which Harry imagined to be something close to a dragon's roar. Some clapped at Fudge's hello. Those were few and far between; most carried on talking. Harry imagined his teacher yelling at their rudeness. It took several minutes for the hall to quiet down.

"Hello!" Fudge called again. "And welcome to the fifth annual Ministry Halloween Gala! We've already seen several familiar faces, and several new ones! And then, of course, there is dear Professor Bagshot, who is not only a familiar face, but a new one."

This earned several laughs, and though Harry did not know why he looked around, trying to find Bathilda. Two summers before, there had been several brief stays in Godric's Hollow when his mum decided it was time to fix up the house James had died in. They had stayed at the elderly woman's home down the road while their house was being repaired. Harry liked her so well he had insisted on sending a present along for Christmas, and in return the woman had sent a whole basket of cauldron cakes. Anyone who sent Harry pastries was automatically in his good favor, as Lily rarely made any herself. Bathilda, unlike his mum, wasn't reminded of cooking for her husband when she baked for the children, so she had no problem filling him up with scones and cakes at teatime. Unfortunately, though she was a kind woman she was short, and Harry could not spot her in the crowd.

"And of course," Fudge carried on when it quieted down again. His booming voice seemed a bit more somber—echoing less—though it was still inescapably loud. "There are several faces we wish could be here, but are not. For many of us, it seems like just yesterday the world was a darker place."

He paused for a long moment, looking out over the silent crowd, but his eyes came to rest on Harry. The boy squirmed in his seat, and his mother leaned forward, cutting off the look.

"But that is over now!" Fudge's voice echoed a moment later. "And this is a night of celebration! To five years of peace, and the better world it has become!"

"To peace!" several called back, and the echoing of the words seemed to swell up over itself until words were lost into a thunderous roar.

Harry was amazed to see the food appear on the table in front of him, apparently out of nowhere. No one else seemed particularly surprised. The woman across the table, who had drained a glass of wine in toast and was a good way into another, smiled. "Ah, just like Hogwarts."

Lily looked over the table, jerking with a harshness that suggesting offense, but her face shifted when she actually saw the woman. "I don't believe we've met," she said slowly.

"No, I don't think we have." The woman had a monocle and a square jaw, and was clearly older than Sirius and Lily, but still younger than most of the magical folk in attendance. "I am Amelia Bones, and you, of course, are Lily Potter."

"Yes," said Lily. "And my son, Harry, and Sirius Black, are to my left here."

"Of course. You must be the same age as our Susan, Harry," the woman said. Harry smiled up at her over the piece of black bread he had bitten into, but she turned her curious gaze to Sirius. "We've met before. After that incident with the muggle police…?"

Sirius laughed. "Yes, of course. I don't think anyone will be forgetting that one any time soon. James' last great act. Congratulations on your induction into the Wizengamot. Youngest witch ever, right?"

"Yes, thank you. I hear there's been some confusion over your mother's will."

"Right," said Sirius, sighing and picking up his own wine glass, swirling the nearly black liquid around. "She never fixed things after my father and brother died, so now it's all on me. The Malfoys are stirring up all kinds of trouble."

They want to change the laws," Bones said. "It's a good deal of work on my end. And they're not realizing that your mother died before anything will be in place, so her will would be executed by the current practices no matter what comes of it. Lucius Malfoy will pour thousands of galleons into open pockets without batting an eyelash, and expects everything he wants to come of it. It's downright disgraceful, is what it is."

"Here, here," said Sirius, lifting his glass to clink against hers. Lily gave in and lifted her own, and Sirius nudged Harry to pick up his goblet of spiced cider. He had to lean halfway out of his chair to reach Bones' glass across the table.

"It's nice to see you with such good manners, Mr. Potter," said Bones. "Your father was, of course, ever the charmer, but reckless to the boot. Just like Mr. Black here. I hope you have more sense."

"You knew my father?" he asked, curious.

"Have you never told him about the police incident, Mr. Black?" Bones asked. Sirius shook his head, but so did Lily, so Bones just shrugged.

"James and I were on the bike," Sirius said, ignoring Lily. "We were being followed by three Death Eaters. Only, we were speeding by muggle laws, so some idiot policy-men started after us."

"Police men, Sirius," Lily corrected, resigned. She finally took a drink from the glass their impromptu cheers had left her holding. Sirius stuck his tongue out at her, like _he_ was the six-year-old. Harry laughed.

"What happened, then?" the short man at the end seat on Bones' side of the table asked.

"Mr. Blakely," Bones said by way of introduction. "My brother in-law. And on my other side here is my husband, Colin."

"Nice to meet you both," said Lily. The tight-lipped Mr. Bones merely nodded and continued to slowly chew his steak.

"So James and I kept them on our tails, right—we didn't want to fly 'cause the Death Eaters were on brooms. But eventually we realized we couldn't just leave the muggles behind, could we? So we led them into an alleyway. When the Death Eaters showed up, we dropped them right out of the sky, so they were all sitting right there for the muggles to take in."

"Poor men didn't know what to make of it," Bones said. "Both were obliviated, of course, but one kept having trouble seeing motorcycles after that… Well, needless to say, Mr. Potter was always a troublemaker. It was such a hassle to work out with the muggles, because in those days most of the time we could just chalk it up to a terrorist group. Only, everyone who had seen what happened knew that wasn't the case. The Prime Minister had to be called."

"What's a terrorist group'?" Harry asked. Lily patted his head.

"Not now, dear," she said, which in Harry's opinion was unfair, because it was this woman who had brought it up and it wasn't his fault he didn't know. He was only six, after all. Lily spooned mashed yams onto his plate, though, and Harry was distracted.

"And the three they brought in—the aurors brought in, that is, once they arrived on the scene—claimed to have been attacked, and they didn't have anything on their wands we could charge them for, worse. Mr. Black and Mr. Potter both received two week suspension from their auror training, if I remember correctly."

"Merlin's balls they didn't have anything on their wands," Sirius growled, making the wizard next to him choke on his drink. That led to another round of introductions with the next sets of witches and wizards down the table, which Harry ignored in favor of the feast.

While the quiet Mr. Bones kept the adults hanging off his words with the tale from when he had met Mrs. Bones causing his own bit of trouble, Harry enjoyed noodles that wiggled like worms and a meat pie with spiders imprinted on the crust. He ate so much he couldn't keep track of how many times he had to gulp down cider in between, but the food was delicious, and there were so many things he had never seen before. It was nearing the end of the meal that he finally slowed down his pace and started listening to the adult's conversation again. His mum's hand had found its way into his hair, and she sat there twirling a strand absently. She didn't look like she'd touched her plate, but the wine glass hadn't left her hand.

"—and I told my brother, you can't go around saying things like that!" Mrs. Bones was saying. She seemed to have had several more glasses of wine, as her cheeks were flushed and her words coming a bit slower. "But he did, and his poor wife… Of course we love Susan dearly, but wouldn't it have been better?" She burped softly. "And now the minister wants to relax the laws again? And with Fudge pushing for the repeal of International Decree Seven…"

"Absolutely ridiculous," Lily said. "Ridiculous."

"Lily," Sirius said. "Maybe we should be heading out now?"

Harry blinked sleepily. He wouldn't have minded going home. The food had made him so drowsy, and though it had been exiting to see all the different people at first they were just people, after all. His mother had different ideas, apparently.

"Don't be a spoil-sport, Sirius," Lily said. "Can't you see we're all just having a grand old time? The Minister—the Minister, who didn't even show up—the Minister called us all together to have a party and socialize and here we are, socializing. Isn't it grand?"

Mrs. Bones snorted into her wine glass. Harry watched the men on either side of her exchange glances over her head, in that adult way, but Bones didn't seem to notice. "To tell the truth," she whispered to Lily, and even though it was so loud the wizard on Sirius' left must have been able to hear her clearly Lily leaned in. "We're only here because Fudge said we would have the best seat in the house, what with me being the most recently inducted. Apparently—" and she lost the word into repetition of 'rently' for a moment and had to pause "—I'm the youngest judge in the century!"

"And the drunkest judge in the century," said her husband.

"And all those other judges—you know them? They've been coming to this little get-together-party-thing for the last four years. The first year? Celebrations so loud they were shaking the fountains. And it's like they don't even—"

"Like they don't even remember," Lily finished for her. She leaned back in her seat.

Fudge had, at some point, abandoned his position at the high table and was wandering about the crowds. He came into earshot just as she finished the statement. "Don't remember what, Ms. Potter?" he asked cheerfully, oblivious of the mood.

Harry did his best not to yawn, which made him cough. But the sound was overshadowed by a simultaneous cough from Mr. Bones. Lily, of course, charged ahead without notice.

"Mrs. Potter, if you wouldn't mind, Mr. Fudge. My husband may be dead, but I still married him, if you remember."

"Well, yes, of course, Mrs. Potter," Fudge said, his smile breaking.

"Which is exactly my point. Because here we are, celebrating!" She waved her wine glass out towards the crowds, the red liquid sloshing over her pale hands. She did not seem to notice. "Partying! Like hundreds of people didn't die for—for what? Pumpkin juice and bats? Goblin wine?"

"Mrs. Potter," Fudge said, having turned, at this point, a shade of red rather like his orange robes. "Of course we haven't forgotten."

He realized, suddenly, looking up, that everyone in the surrounding area had once again quieted, and that once again there were eyes and ears fixed on him from all around. He cleared his throat.

"Of course we haven't forgotten," he repeated, louder. "What did I say earlier? There are many we wish could be among us—your husband included—"

"I'm glad he isn't!"

Her voice echoed sharply through the hall as she stood, turning to face him. Wine splashed over Harry as the glass passed over his head, but it was Sirius, not Lily, who immediately started dabbing at his godson's face with a napkin.

"I'm glad my husband does not have to see this! What is this—this _revelry_ on what we mark as an important ceasefire in a battle, a respite to mourn our dead and prepare for the future? This toast to peace when peace is about as certain as—as—as the sun orbiting the earth? Perspective, Fudge, allows us to blind ourselves, and here we sit eating as merrily as though the dead did not die in sacrifice, to put us at an advantage when darkness comes again!"

Fudge's face looked as though his had been the one with wine spilled over it. "Mrs. Potter!" he exclaimed. "What is this ridiculous nonsense! You—you were instrumental in the end of things! You saw You-Know-Who die yourself!"

"No, Fudge," she said coldly. Her voice seemed to fill the hall—though that was impossible, really; it was far too large and she had not cast any magic. But all eyes were watching her. "I saw a magical backlash that made no sense. I saw the moment his curse hit my son, and saw the body disappear. I saw the explanation of this anomaly waved off as a fairytale ending." She leaned a little closer to the man, taking advantage that she was taller than him in her heels. "You've been making your bids for Minister Bagnold's seat, so I'll tell you the same thing I told her: _there is no such thing as a fairytale ending."_

The man was left spluttering for words when she turned her back on him, collecting her cloak from where it rested on the back of her seat. He had to step aside as she cast it over her shoulders. "Madame Bones," she said, ignoring him still. "Thank you for the conversation. Do write. Sirius?"

0.

_There is a photo, tucked away in a folder, buried in what is left of the archives of the Daily Prophet. It has not seen the light of day in many years, and perhaps will not until someone curious goes digging into the past. But the scene is burned into the minds of all left who saw it: a woman, as vengeful an image as that of Morgana, gliding through a crowd of hundreds, all eyes looking up at her. Short hair floating like fire around her head, green eyes glittering with candlelight, freckled skin looking all the lighter against the fur lining of her black cloak. The echoes of footsteps, and a man carrying a tired child in her wake: the boy that would change the future._

_It is said that fame did not suit Lily Potter. But fame had forced itself on her, and she did not care to change herself for it. She always believed she should not have to change herself to suit the world around her. Perhaps such phrasing was a kindness: others would say much more directly that she was the sort of woman to try and shape the world to her own imagining._

_Harry Potter often wished that the image of his mother that the newspapers used in equal parts to slander and support her was the image he remembered from that Halloween. It was not. Lily Potter changed that night. She stopped trying to run from the past, and rose up instead to face it._

_When they had returned from the disastrous gala, she had silenced Sirius' laughter and sent him and Remus home. For a long time she sat in the dark, the ocean pounding in her ears._

_She woke her son._

"_Harry," she said. "Do you remember your father?"_

_She could not control the world. She could not control the Ministry, or how magical folk lived their day-to-day lives. She could not force vigilance upon them, or force them to remember the past._

"_Do you remember how he died? Do you remember how you got that scar?"_

_Her son, her Harry, would not be blind. Someday, when the fact that he was Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, was inescapable—when she could not protect him—when the magical world, in it's insolent ignorance, was unready to face reality—he would be strong enough._

_The pensive was on the table. Harry did not remember, but Lily would make sure he would never forget._

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><p>AN: And here's chapter three! One thing I would like to note before we get to part II of this section-I am not from France. I do not speak French. I know one person who is French-American, but other than that, my knowledge of France (let alone the French education system) is limited to what I research with Google searches. And while I think, for the most part, that the artistic liberties I'll take are well within reason, if there is anything that stands out to you as particularly wrong, PLEASE LET ME KNOW SO I CAN CORRECT IT. My research usually starts with a Wikipedia page and extends to links following, and additional searches if that isn't satisfactory, and usually I end up down rabbit holes-but I have no first-hand experience or deep studying to back things up, so don't hesitate to let me know.

Your comments are the wine filling my metaphorical wine glass-uh, I mean, great for keeping words moving liberally. Thank you again, and see you next week!


	4. An Old Road Pt II

Potential CW for this chapter and the next: bullying

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><p>10.<p>

On November first, two years following the disastrous gala, Harry yawned as he sat at the back of a classroom. He was tired: his mother, for the third year in the row, had woken him in the night to share her memories of when he was a baby. After a sight like that, a boy did not sleep. He could not sleep, for fear that he, like her, would not know the difference between sleeping and waking. The horror. The shrill voice. _The Green Light_.

In the classroom, the children were oblivious to the history his mind dwelled on. Their minds were, for the most part, focused in anger on the clock.

"_Children,"_ the teacher said. Her voice had the harshness of the local dialect, the one that Harry had always known. _"As you can see, bullying is not tolerated here. Until whoever does this comes forward, we will all sit, in silence, waiting. It doesn't matter if the bell rings. We will wait."_

They had been sitting for an hour already. On returning from their time in the yard, there had been a commotion when one of the desks was found filled with grass snakes. The boy whose desk it was, Claude, had cried so hard he had to leave the room. The groundskeeper had been called in to remove the snakes, which complained in loud hisses about being disturbed from the warm dark place they had been found to sit, and the class had been returned to order. Then they sat in silence, while the teacher waited for the culprit to come forward.

In truth, Miss Lapointe's heart was still pounding in her chest. She had no idea what to make of the situation. Having been raised running around in the fields of an abandoned housing development of one of the local villages, she had no fear of snakes, but still the sight of so many gave her stomach a turn. How anyone could have gotten so many into the classroom was beyond her—and her usual suspect was, in this case, the victim. The remaining boys in his posse were hardly laughing.

One child in the room had gone pale and was shaking in his seat. Nicolas Baudin. That did not surprise Miss Lapointe. Nicolas was a short boy with asthma, and Claude's most recent victim. The staff had not caught the bullies in any action, and Nicolas was far too timid to speak up for himself, so Claude's crime had, as usual, gone unpunished. Miss Lapointe had no doubt in her mind that Nicolas had no part in this incident. She supposed that he was imagining the terror that Claude would wreak on him if no one came forward, and almost pitied the boy shaking in his seat.

The whole class was silent as the bell rang. The children looked at her expectantly, but Miss Lapointe did her best to remain stone-faced. She considered letting the girls go, but a moment after chided herself for the stereotyping. Girls could be just as cruel as boys. Worse, when their minds were set on it. This was only her third year teaching, but she had gone to school. She remembered.

Miss Lapointe sighed. This was exactly what she had learned to hate about her job. She had thought—a smart girl like her, shouldn't she share that, help shape the children of the country? She had thought. In truth, she had been carrying an idealized vision of children, thinking that if she were simply _nice_ to them, they would be _nice_ in return, and through that circle of _niceness_ she would somehow shape them into brilliant students who loved to learn from her as much as she loved to teach them. Well, she had succeeded in that sense: the students loved her as little as she loved them. But she was not a woman who gave up so easily. Maybe teaching had not been the romantic career of goodness she had envisioned, but she would not let that defeat her. She would show these children at least something, before they were passed onto the next teacher.

One of the girls raised her hand tentatively. The other stared at her, but Miss Lapointe could see by the lack of guilt in her face it had nothing to do with the incident. "_Yes, El?" _she asked.

"_Miss,_" the girl said. _"Miss, some of us have to take the bus back to the villages. If we don't catch the bus, we'll not be able to go home, miss."_

"_That is true,"_ Miss Lapointe said. _"And this is a difficult situation, isn't it? But that is what happens, El, when this sort of incident occurs. We cannot just let bullying slide."_

The children looked at each other in shock. She remembered having to catch the bus out of the town. The villages did not have their own schools, so they all gathered here, in this town just large enough to warrant one, but that meant the children had to be bussed over all together. Mostly their parents were farmers, or, if not that, were one of two workers in a store or café or bar. They could not spare the time to fetch their children. Miss Lapointe knew this too deeply: her own father had worked in a granary and her mother had been far too busy caring for her other six children to worry about one missing the bus. If one missed it in the morning, they spent the day helping out around the house. If they missed it in the evening, they had to wait until their father got off work at nine, and then the hour it took for him to drive out to pick them up. No, Miss Lapointe would not hold them so long that they would miss the bus. She looked at the clock, and gave it eight minutes. Enough the children would have to run, but not so much that they would be in any real danger.

The minutes ticked down with the children exchanging glances in growing alarm. The ones who lived in town—about a third—were not concerned over getting home, but they longed to be free of the oppressive atmosphere of the classroom in punishment. Many of the village children were sitting half out of their seats, prepared to bolt the moment she gave the word.

As the seventh minute ticked away, Miss Lapointe found herself disappointed yet again. She prepared her speech on why bullying was a horrible thing, and a warning that they would be losing their yard time the next day, but before she could clear her throat to voice it, the horrible scraping of a chair against the hardwood floors sounded in the classroom, making several students jump. She looked up.

The boy who stood in the back of the classroom was one of the village children. He wasn't one of the typical farmers or villagers, no. He lived out in the old estate that had been in ruins for ages. His mother, as far as she understood, was single, and English, and had short hair that made the older women whisper _lesbian _under their breath. But she had never had any trouble with James Jeannot. He was a quiet child, and played equally with the main groups of children. He never bothered any of the other children, and none of them ever bothered him. His school work was always done decently, and he had never caused trouble in the classroom.

"_Yes, James?" _she asked, but was certain that this was, in fact, the true confession. A quiet boy like him wouldn't speak up otherwise. _"I put the snakes in Claude's desk, Miss Lapointe," _he said. Most of the children gaped. He had probably known several since he had moved to France, so they too thought this was out of character. But how well did any of them really know the boy?

"_Very well,_" she said slowly. "_Mr. Jeannot, please come with me. The rest of you can pack up."_

The class was a flurry of activity in the next seconds. She kept an eye on the boy as he came forward; there were a few shoulders in his way, but nothing serious. Now that she saw him among the rest of his classmates, she realized James was almost as small as Nicolas, and not so pudgy. She wondered that she had not noticed before, but he could be the prime target for bullies. She imagined his father must have been Asian or Indian, somewhere along; she'd met his mother once and she clearly was not, but the boy had tan skin that most of the children had lost this late in the year, and his eyes, beneath the round glasses, were so dark they felt unnatural. As he was quite small, he had never caught her eye, but to a bully the unnoticed were prime targets.

He stood in silence as she waited a few moments for the rest of the children to stream into the

cloakroom, then followed as she locked the classroom door. She was unnerved by James' silence. He wasn't crying or muttering, or laughing at having nearly gotten away with his prank. He didn't say a thing, and she couldn't see his face, but she didn't imagine there to be any guilt written on it. He didn't seem the type of boy that would feel guilt. The thought disturbed her.

They made their way down the hall to the teachers' office. Luckily, most of the other teachers would still be in their classrooms; most filled the hour after classes ended with grading, or left immediately following the bell. The few staff members passing through nodded as they entered, and old Mrs. Norman, the year one teacher, even said hello.

"_Good afternoon, Jaime," _she said fondly. _"Did you miss the bus? Don't worry, your sister made it alright."_

James smiled at her vaguely, but didn't say anything. Mrs. Norman looked to Miss Lapointe for answers. She shook her head and hurried James along to the couches near the corner, where he sat while she hurried to the secretary's desk.

"_Hey, Di," _she said. _"Could you put in a call to Mrs. Jeannot? The mother of James, my class. Tell her I need her to come in for a meeting about her son. Urgently."_

The woman pulled out a book labeled 'Lapointe' and started flipping through the pages. "_What's the matter?"_ She asked, then leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, "_Is it about the snake incident?"_

"_Yes," _said Miss Lapointe. The secretary reached James' page, where his school portrait stared up at her.

"_Oh!" _the secretary exclaimed, tracing down to Mrs. Jeannot's phone number. "_Him? But he's such a sweet boy!"_

"_Is he? I don't think I've ever heard a word out of him that wasn't strictly called for."_

"_Probably not," _Di agreed, even as she reached to dial the phone. _"But you know last year, when I was covering in the library because Jacqueline was out? He used to—yes, Mrs. Jeannot?"_

Miss Lapointe left Di to sort out things with Mrs. Jeannot and returned to the couches. James had his feet up so he could wrap his arms around his knees. The teacher was going to scold him, but it was such a pathetic pose she could not bring herself to. Instead she took a seat across from him and looked—really looked—at the boy.

Underneath the odd round glasses, the boy's dark eyes were ringed pink, but his face was still. He stared back at her, expression caught between defensive and resigned. It was an odd mix. There was something else as well, but was it guilt? Fear? Pride? Underneath his silence she could not tell. Maybe she was imagining everything. His darkish skin was strangely slack.

"_How did you do it?"_ she asked at last, as Di droned on in the background. The boy shifted, his head tilting in dog-like confusion.

"_Aren't you going to ask me why?"_

"_Don't talk back to me," _she said, but paused. "_We'll get to that. How did you do it?"_

James shrugged. _"I found them outside, and picked them up and carried them back into the classroom. Snakes like dark, warm places, you know."_

"_I lock the classroom after lunch," _she said. James looked up, like he was trying to remember something, but then shook his head.

"_It wasn't locked, or I wouldn't have been able to get in."_

She bit back a sigh. _"And that many snakes? How were you able to get them all in?"_

"_The way anyone would, I suppose,"_ he said. _"They're really gentle creatures, at least with humans. They're too afraid of us to be otherwise."_

She had never heard snakes described as gentle before.

"_There must have been twenty in his desk, at least."_

"_Thirty three." _At least he did not look like he would smile. This would be much more difficult if he found the situation amusing in some way, but he didn't seem to. That was reassuring to her, reassuring that this would not be a repeated case.

"_Why did you do it?" _she asked at last, when the silence between them had grown heavy. The boy's face grew more still, unnerving in the same way as his silence.

"_Claude's a bully," _he said, his voice a bit quieter, but somehow more resolved. _"He's a bully and no one does anything about it."_

"_So you decided to bully him in return?"_

At last, in the tiniest hitch of breath, the boy began to show some emotion beyond coolness. _"You didn't do anything when he took Nicolas' lunch."_

"_Do you think I should have taken his lunch, to be fair, then?" _she asked. _"To just repeat the cruelty onto him? Do you think that sort of cyclic hate solves anything?"_

"_I…. don't know what that means."_

"_It means that when someone hurts you, you want to hurt them, and then they want to hurt you, and on and on and—"_

"_I didn't want to hurt anyone!" _the boy cried, but then he shut his mouth and locked his jaw. She couldn't get a read from his eyes. As dark as they were, she couldn't try to understand them. It bothered her. Her eyes drifted around his face. His brow, she noticed, was a shade lighter than the rest of his face, though most of it was hidden under his fringe of ebony hair. His cheek wobbled, like he was physically forcing himself to stay still so he would not say anything else.

"_You didn't?"_ she echoed, incredulous._ "James, you put thirty-three snakes in Claude's desk. He had to go to the nurse's; they were scared he might hyperventilate at the shock."_

"_I know." _He almost smiled—almost, but the look on his face turned into one of horror. _"He's a vile, nasty person,"_ he said, but his voice was small, and with none of that strength any more.

"_Do you believe that, or are you trying to justify what you did?"_

"_I believe it,"_ he said, and she believed him. But his voice remained small._ "He's mean for no reason, and to people who won't stand up for themselves."_

"_So you think it's your job to stand up for them?"_

"_Someone has to!" _he said fiercely. And he looked up and glared, like somehow this was her fault. _"You certainly haven't."_

That hit her in the gut. Here she was, trying to solve one incident of bullying, only to be pulling on the latest link in a whole chain. How little of the children's world was she seeing? She expected so little of them, yet they surpassed her worst expectations. Still, it was her chastising this boy, not the other way around.

"_So you became the bully,"_ she said.

"_I—"_ He swallowed his words, and his gaze slipped to the side. But then he seemed to blink, collecting his fragmented emotions back together. _"He hurt my sister," _he said, much calmer. _"And only someone vile would do that."_

"_And someone vile deserves to be hurt?"_

He did not respond.

Miss Lapointe sighed, sitting back into her armchair. This was certainly turning out to be a much more complicated matter than she had wanted to deal with. She had hoped it would just be a kid who would admit it: he wanted Claude to suffer because Claude was a bully. But James refused to admit it, and so would refuse to admit he was in the wrong. Clearly he knew that he was not responsible for this sort of justice. But at the same time, he was also apparently expecting that she would be the one to deal it out, and she had failed. What was a child supposed to do, when he saw adults not raising a finger to cease injustice? Certainly he had not seen everything—they were trying to catch Claude in the act, so he could be taught an appropriate lesson—but then again, he was among Claude's pool of potential victims, so it must be a much more urgent matter to him than her.

They sat staring at each other for a good long while, until James once again lost his composure and slumped back in his seat too, his posture matching hers.

"_What did Claude do to your sister?" _she asked a few minutes later, when she remembered. He looked up again.

"_What?"_

"_You said he hurt your sister."_

The boy just stared at her. _"Why?"_ he asked. _"You're not going to do anything about it, anyways."_

They waited in silence for some twenty minutes more. Finally Liliane Jeannot came through the front office. _"Miss Lapointe," _Di called back to them. _"Mrs. Jeannot is here."_

Is seemed too soon. James was from one of the villages; it should have taken his mother longer to get here. But they did live out on the estate, so, she mused, it was highly likely the Jeannots were both wealthy and eccentric. Mrs. Jeannot may very well have sped all the way here in some ridiculous car. Or she may have been reached at work—where did Mrs. Jeannot work? Miss Lapointe tried to remember as she stood, but she had only seen the woman once, and never spoken personally.

She led James out the door beside Di's desk, and they emerged in the office on the other side. Despite wracking her memories to recall the woman's profession, she was unprepared for the sight of the woman that stood waiting. In the most simple terms, she was beautiful. She looked like her son, it was true: the same silky black hair, though hers was loosely curled around her face; tan skin, though lighter than her son's; grey eyes. She was dressed in a pinstriped pencil skirt and matching blazer over a simple white blouse, as though she had just come from a secretary job in the city. James seemed to stiffen at the sight of her; Miss Lapointe wondered if this was in fact a woman coming off work, though she could not guess where Mrs. Jeannot could work within a half hour drive where such attire would be common.

"_Miss Lapointe," _she said gravely. Although Miss Lapointe wasn't sure she was not the same age as this woman, she suddenly felt very young. _"I am not fond of being called out. Your secretary mentioned an incident, and was quite insistent."_

"_Yes," _the teacher said. _"Yes. Would you like to come sit down? I'm afraid we need to have a bit of a chat with James here."_

The woman gestured to the plain armchairs in the office waiting area. _"Won't here do?"_

"_I don't see why not," _Miss Lapointe agreed. She felt, for some reason, like she was giving in, though it was a perfectly reasonable suggestion. The three sat at the three armchairs, and Di went back to her typing. Strange, Miss Lapointe thought. Three seemed like an odd number of armchairs to equip the sitting room. She had never noticed before.

"_James," _Mrs. Jeannot was saying before the teacher realized it. _"Would you like to tell me what you've done?"_

The boy shook his head.

"James."

His shoulders sunk, and he mumbled something. His mother did not so much as bat an eyelash.

Finally he said something, a bit louder, in English. Miss Lapointe spoke English decently after university, but she wasn't in practice and hadn't been expecting it, either.

"_What?" _Mrs. Jeannot asked, in French.

"_I put snakes in Claude's desk."_

To her credit, Mrs. Jeannot did not say anything, but confusion did reach her face. _"Snakes?"_

"_He put thirty three, by his count, in Claude's desk_," Miss Lapointe clarified. Mrs. Jeannot raised an eyebrow, though she seemed almost amused. She shook her head, and the expression faded.

"_James," _she chided. _"Why would you do something like that?"_

"_He broke Holly's horse!"_

It was the first time since his mother arrived that his passions were raised. The teacher was puzzled by the statement, but assumed that Holly was his sister and her horse was some toy. The intense response did not seem to faze his mother, however; she merely tilted her head and crossed her arms, bemusement working a furrow into her brow.

"_So that's where it went,_" she said at last. _"Regardless, it was wrong."_

"_It was," _Miss Lapointe agreed, when James stayed silent. It was strange, but she felt at distance from the conversation. Normally, when parents were called in they tried to apologize for their child, or they yelled at them so aggressively it became clear why there had been a problem at all. But Mrs. Jeannot, like her son, seemed levelheaded to an extreme. She was certainly a good deal more effective in the interrogation than Miss Lapointe was, as the same questions the teacher had asked had taken the mother half the time to pose and had actually been answered. _"Claude had to be taken home early. He was in such a state of shock. It was a terribly cruel thing to do."_

"_James knows that. Don't you, James."_

The boy tried to stay quiet again, looking at his hands. The thin fingers were gripping the edge of the chair's cushion so tightly his knuckles were turning white.

"_James. You know what you did was wrong, right?"_

"_Yes," _he mumbled.

"_It was mean."_

"_Yes."_

"_Do you feel bad about it?"_

The boy hesitated, and looked up with the same expression had in their earlier conversation: slack-faced, calculating. _"I don't know," _he said honestly. _"I didn't want to hurt anyone."_

"_But you still did it. You made a mistake."_

He waited a beat, but nodded. _"Yes."_

Mrs. Jeannot nodded, and looked to Miss Lapointe. _"I assume there is some sort of standardized punishment from the school regarding these sorts of things."_

The teacher nodded. _"Well, it is a bit of an unusual case. But there will be lines, in place of yard time, for several days. And he will need to apologize to Claude, of course."_

"_Of course,"_ Mrs. Jeannot repeated. _"James will do that. Won't you, James."_

"_Yes." _

"_Is there anything else you need from us, Miss Lapointe?" _Mrs. Jeannot asked.

Miss Lapointe opened her mouth to speak, but found no words waiting on her tongue. This woman was an anomaly among mothers, a force of nature that seemed to lift the teacher up from her intentions and deposit her in an entirely different state. She had swept in and resolved the situation with all the pomp and circumstance of a herd of cattle crossing a highway—only quickly. Far too quickly, all things considered.

"_James will need to get his things from the classroom," _she said at last.

"_Yes,"_ Mrs. Jeannot said. _"I will take him home, as the bus has already left. I assume Holly was on it by herself?"_

"_She'll stay with her friend Martel until we go get her," _James said, as smoothly as though he had spoken to the girl beforehand. Miss Lapointe wondered at that. She would need to speak with the girl's teacher, to see if there was something deeper going on. Though put-together as Mrs. Jeannot appeared it seemed impossible to imagine anything out of place in their family life—besides the absence of the father, of course—Miss Lapointe could not imagine the woman in the suit coming home to the ramshackle manor house.

"_Still, we'll have to hurry," _the woman said, drawing her sleeve up to check an elegant silver watch. _"We don't want to worry her."_

The three of them stood, and Miss Lapointe found herself leading the way through deserted halls to the classroom. She unlocked the door and James slipped past, hurrying to his seat to collect his things.

This left Miss Lapointe in a curious position waiting in the doorway with Mrs. Jeannot. A quick glance out of the corner of her eye revealed that the woman's nose was longer than suited her profile. Somehow the teacher took satisfaction in noticing this.

"_I trust something is being done about this 'Claude'," _Mrs. Jeannot said quietly, eyes on her son. Miss Lapointe flinched slightly, but tried to disguise it by raising a hand to fix her hair. She caught herself and wondered why she bothered.

"_It's been a difficult year so far," _she admitted. _"Bullying in the yard is common enough, but usually we can catch a child in the act before it grows into too much of an issue. Claude is… a work in progress."_

"_My daughter came home in tears yesterday, Miss Lapointe," _Mrs. Jeannot said sharply. Her unsmiling face turned towards the teacher, staring down. Though her face was lacking in blemishes or wrinkles, there was a tightness in the skin around her eyes that made Miss Lapointe swallow. _"She is only a six-year-old girl, a year one. They should not be expected to defend themselves from children of the upper years, should they?"_

"_No," _Miss Lapointe agreed. _"I'm afraid I wasn't even aware of the incident until I interviewed James this afternoon."_

"_This school's discipline system is a disappointment." _

Miss Lapointe was still distracted by the intensity of her stare. Grey eyes like dusty cement. They could have been beautiful, on someone else, but on this woman, they were a weapon. Unnatural and cold.

Mrs. Jeannot looked away.

"_I cannot believe that my children would be trying to take a bullying incident into their own hands without dire circumstances. James has been raised to the belief that bullying is wrong, Miss Lapointe. He knows the difference between a prank and cruelty."_

"_I expect so. But even the best of children slip up."_

The woman clicked her tongue. James was returning, carrying his book bag across from the cloakroom. "_Is that everything?" _She asked her son. The boy nodded. _"Alright, then. Miss Lapointe, I apologize for James' conduct, and the time you had to take out of your day for it. Good afternoon."_

Mrs. Jeannot turned and guided her son away, a firm hand on his shoulder, without waiting for the teacher's response. Miss Lapointe watched them walk down the hall for a moment, then turned to lock the classroom door again. When she turned back, the pair was gone.

As she returned to the staff lounge to collect her own things, Miss Lapointe thought about the day's strange events. She still could not figure out how such a small boy had managed to get all those snakes into the desk. A bag, perhaps—but he still had to get into a locked room. She would have to check the windows; perhaps one of them was loose and he had managed to slip through. He was quite small.

As she came back into the office, she found Di staring into the space around the armchairs. _"What a woman," _Miss Lapointe said, assuming the secretary focused on the earlier conversation. _"Honestly, I've never felt so out-classed. I ought to ask her for lessons in managing children."_

Di didn't reply. Miss Lapointe sighed and went through to collect her things. Di was nice enough, but she could be a bit odd. They had been in school together, but while Miss Lapointe headed to University Di had married right away.

After the long day, it was a relief that her stack of homework to grade was light. She packed away her class logs into her bag and snapped it shut, looking out the window, trying to decide whether to wrap her scarf around her neck or leave it folded in the pocket of her pea coat.

Outside, the sky had turned grey, and wind was starting to pick up in the trees. Miss Lapointe's brow furrowed. Not an hour earlier the sky had been clear and blue, the early November sun shining down as the children hurried out the doors. Now the clouds hung heavy in the sky. She wound the scarf tightly around her neck, tucking the ends into her coat collar, and picked up her bag, rummaging in her pockets for her car keys. She had to put down the bag again and unbutton her coat, finding them in the pocket of her sweater, and by the time she was ready to leave again a thin but fast rain had started falling. Hurrying out of the lounge and into the office, she said goodbye to Di.

Di did not respond. Miss Lapointe almost hurried out without noticing, but she paused at the door and turned back. The secretary was still staring at the same spot amongst the armchairs. Her usually ruddy face had gone pale, and not a hair had moved since Miss Lapointe had gone past her first time.

"_Di?"_

Finally the woman looked up at her.

"_You know," _she said, voice dragging. _"I sit here for nine hours, every day."_

"_Well, yes, you are the secretary…"_

"_There's not a lot to do."_

"_No?"_

"_And I've seen a lot of strange things."_

"_I can only imagine."_

"_But…"_

The woman nodded towards the chairs. They seem plain and unassuming enough, especially now that Mrs. Jeannot had left them behind.

"_We've only ever had two armchairs."_

0.

_A storm, evening. Two children sat in candle-lit dark. Out the window the grass whipped back and forth, swooshing like waves battered by the rain. Their mother had been called to the hospital, and there hadn't been enough time to summon their Uncles._

"_Don't leave this room, either of you," she said, downing a potion and turning red hair black, freckles spreading to turn her whole skin tan. "And Harry, make sure you get some sleep. You have school tomorrow."_

"_Yes, mum."_

_She shut the door and the whole house shook with silence._

"_Harry," the girl said, some time later. The boy didn't look up from his homework, chewing on the end of his pencil._

"_Harry!"_

"_What?"_

"_I have to use the toilet."_

"_Then go."_

"_Mum said not to leave!"_

"_I don't think she meant that you couldn't go to the loo."_

_Silence. Harry finished the maths problem and went on to the next. He liked maths—not as much as reading, but it was like a game._

"_Harry?"_

"_What?"_

"_I'm scared."_

_He sighed. "It's just down the hall, Hols." But he stood up. "Come on, I'll stand outside. That'll be fine, right?"_

_When they came back, he sank back onto his bed. Holly sat on the end of it, staring at his homework._

"_What?" he asked again._

"_Why don't I get to play the game?"_

_Harry blinked. His name was written at the top of the page, but it wasn't really his name. James Jeannot. Their mum always called it the game: "You'll play James, and you can't let anyone know that you're really Harry, or you lose. Understand? _Understand, James?"

_He didn't understand, and neither did his sister, apparently. "You do play," he said. "You call me James when we're in town, and you'll be Hollis Jeannot, at school."_

"_But if you're James, why can't I play Lily?"_

_Harry looked up at her. "You know I'm not playing dad, Hols," he said. "Its just his name."_

"_Oh," she said. She looked disappointed, though, so he indulged her._

"_Well?" he said. "If you were playing Lily, what would you do right now?"_

"_Uhmmm," she said, biting her lip. She looked around, then grinned. "I know!" she said. She stood up and put her hands on her hips. "HARRY!" she shouted. "You put that candle out right now! It's time for bed, not reading!"_

_Harry laughed. "You'll have to work on it," he said. Holly pouted, but sat back down. Harry, however, was staring at the candle. "Want to play a game, Hols?" He asked._

"_What type of game? A secret game?"_

"_Mm-hmm. Except you've got to keep a secret from mum."_

_She giggled. "Okay," she said. "What's the secret?"_

"_Come here."_

_He stood, pulling his sister towards the desk. The table sat on the corner of it, and they both stared at it._

"_Harry? What's the secret?"_

_The candle went out, and the girl shrieked, grabbing her brother's arm._

"_Harry! Bring it back!"_

"_Okay."_

_The flame re-appeared. He looked down at his sister, who let go and glared at him with nose wrinkled, and was about to say something when her mouth opened into an 'o'._

"_That was magic!" she whispered. Harry grinned._

"_Look," he said. The flame started bending back and forth, as though it were being buffeted by the wind that raced around the manor, but the rest of the room was still._

"_Wow," said Hollis. "When do I get to do that?"_

"_I dunno," said Harry. "But you can't tell mum, alright?"_

"_Okay," she said. She looked up at her brother. "This means you're going to Hogwarts, right? Like mum and dad and Siri and Rem?"_

"_Not until I'm eleven," he said. He turned back to the bed, but his homework was suddenly less exciting now that he had magic and Hogwarts on his mind. His sister came over and laid down beside him._

"_Harry," she said. "Tell me one of Sirius' stories about Hogwarts."_

"_You know them all as well as I do."_

"_I know. But I want a story."_

_He turned his head to face her, thinking. "Okay," he said at last. "Once, when Prongs was fourteen and Padfoot was fifteen, Prongs received a letter from home…"_

11.

The radio in the car broke again. The storm brewing overhead was sending down waves of static, washing over the car with white noise. Between the buzzing, a woman crooned in German over a man an ocean away.

"So," said Lily. She spoke in English, as she usually did with her son, to ensure he did not lose his proficiency. Not that he would, with all the British TV he watched, but she still felt it was important to keep him aware of his true home. "Tell me about Claude."

In the passenger seat, Harry sighed and slumped. She had no doubt he would find guilt for what he had done; the boy could hardly tease his sister without worrying about it later. But he had still chosen to fill a boy's desk with snakes—Merlin knows how—and there had to be good reason.

"He's mean to everyone," Harry said. "He wasn't this bad when we started school, but then he started spending time with Jaque and Maurice and all three of them started picking on the others. I don't get it. Jaque used to be so nice."

"How are they mean?"

"Well, there's a boy in our class, Nicolas. He's from town, so you wouldn't know him, but he's supposed to buy lunch from the cafeteria every day, so he always has a little bit of money. Claude and the others take it to buy sweets."

Stealing lunch money? It sounded too ridiculous to be true, but when Lily thought back to her days in Primary, she could remember that sort of thing happening. "So why doesn't he tell the teacher?"

Harry shrugged. "Claude probably said they would beat him up. And the teachers don't do anything."

Outside the car, lightning flashed in the distance. She sped up a bit, thinking of Hollis, who did not like thunder, at her friend's house without her brother. Normally he would distract her during a storm, reading her a story or watching a movie or, on at least one occasion, giving in and playing dolls with the girl.

"And he broke Holly's horse," Harry added. It took Lily a moment to realize he meant Claude.

"She didn't bring it home with her yesterday."

"The teacher threw it away. She said it was in bits, and wouldn't let me have it."

"Did he choose to bother Hollis over something you did?"

"I don't know!" Harry ran his fingers through his hair. It was a habit shockingly similar to the one James had always had—only her son was always flattening his hair, not fluffing it up. "I mean, we mostly ignore each other, 'less we're playing football, but then it's just playing, right? I don't know why he would go after Hols!"

"That's the thing about being nice," said Lily. "Sometimes people look at a nice person and think they are weak, and if they think they are weak then they think that they're an easy target to pick on. They think if they pick on them, they'll feel better about themselves."

"That's stupid. How could picking on someone make you feel better about yourself?"

"Do you feel better after putting snakes in Claude's desk?"

Harry was quiet, and for a moment the radio came back in. Now a man was singing an old song alongside an acoustic guitar, wondering about lost days. Lily turned it down before the static could cut it off again.

"It was wrong of him to hurt Holly like that," Harry finally said.

"It was wrong of you to put snakes in his desk," Lily countered.

"Probably," her son agreed. "But no one else was going to do anything, were they?"

They came across another small village, passing through right as the rain finally started. Lily changed the radio to a local news station, an announcer warning of flash floods in the foothills. Lily wasn't particularly worried about their village or the mansion, which were firmly in the flatlands, but Harry watched the rain darkening the bare fields glumly. Sun was still lighting them in the distance, where the clouds broke off, but they were driving deeper into the storm. Lightning played far off ahead of them, and Lily sped up again. There was no one else out driving, in any case. She had no reason to go slowly.

It was times like this that the problems of raising her children among muggles became apparent. Driving from place to place was slow. It took forty minutes to get from the town to the village, and another fifteen out to the mansion. She couldn't have shown up in town without her car, however, or shown up too quickly, without raising suspicions. All the same, she doubted anyone would notice if she were to apparate them to just outside the village, but then they would have no car to make the final stretch. Flooing was simply out of the question among muggles, and besides, while she felt safer in France than Britain, there was simply no telling who would be watching the network. She had cut the mansion off from it after the Halloween gala two years before, when she had so foolishly connected directly to the Ministry of Magic. Ministry aside, there were several others with means of accessing records that could breach the mansion's security with a simple reversing charm—Dumbledore among them. It had been foolish to connect the mansion at all, let alone floo directly to the ministry. But what was done was done.

As the car slid past the first building of their village—the main granary—the sky had grown dark entirely. It was to be expected, of course, that the sky would darken earlier now that it was November, but it still made Lily nervous. She located the house of Hollis' friend as quickly as she could, and checked her watch. There was still a half hour left in her potion. Leaving Harry to wait in the running car, she hurried up the steps to the door.

A girl about Hollis' age opened the door. Lily blinked, but forced herself to smile. "_You must be Martel."_

"_Who are you, then?" _the girl challenged.

"_Martel!" _someone else called. The woman who Lily had expected to answer came into view: Martel's grandmother, Adele. "_Sorry about that, Ms. Jeannot. The girl clearly needs to learn her manners!"_

Martel stuck out her tongue.

"_That's quite alright,_" said Lily. _"However, I was wondering if my daughter had come by…?"_

"_Holly?" _Adele asked. The way she pronounced the name pulled the 'y' up strangely, making the name sound odd.

"_She went home when it looked like it was going to rain," _Martel said. _"Mathis was going to walk her home, but she didn't want him to, and we're not supposed to—"_

"_She went home about twenty minutes ago," _Adele said, cutting her off. _"Did you not drive by on your way down here?"_

"_I just got in from town,"_ Lily explained, though all she really wanted to do was hurry off to find her daughter. The thought of the girl—the six-year-old little girl—walking home all alone made her nervous. _"James missed the bus. We hoped she had stayed here."_

"_Did he really put snakes in Claude's desk?" _the girl asked.

"_Martel!"_

Lily sighed, and crouched down to look at the girl at eye-level. _"He did, and he knows it wasn't a good thing to do at all, Martel. He'll apologize to Claude tomorrow, and he is in trouble."_

"_Claude deserved it," _the girl said with a shrug, and turned to disappear inside.

"_Well," _said Lily, straightening up. _"I'd better hurry home, then."_

"_You don't need anything, out there all alone in that mansion, do you, Ms. Jeannot?" _Adele asked. She was not the brightest woman, and certainly did not have the broadest world view, having been born in this very village, but she never failed to offer Lily any help she could.

"_Oh, we're very good. Fixing up the place nicely." _Lily stepped away from the door and down the stairs, back into the lane to open the car door.

"_Alright," _Adele called back. "_But don't hesitate to call, dear. Good afternoon!"_

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><p>Thank you! Your comments are like bursts of accidental magic-I mean, encourage bursts of editing.<p> 


	5. An Old Road Pt III

Again, to about the same extent as last chapter, potential CW for bullying.

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><p>12.<p>

"Where's Holly?" Harry demanded as soon as his mother had her head through the door.

"Apparently she walked home alone," Lily said, blinking a bit at her son's ferocity. Of course, that wasn't anything out of the ordinary for him, when it came to his sister. Though it was always apparent how dependent Holly was on her older brother, especially with the way she had moped when Harry had started school without her, anyone who looked hard enough could see he was just as dependent on her. A byproduct of his protective nature, surely. She wondered if that wasn't the cause for him lashing out against this Claude boy, but pulled the car off down the main road without saying anything.

Harry was alert in his seat as they hit the bumpy dirt road that led to the Black manor they had come to live in. "Why didn't she just stay put?" he moaned, when they had sped about five minute from the village. "She could have just stayed with Martel!"

"Yes. I'll have to have a proper conversation with her about what to do when you're not there—"

"There she is!" Harry exclaimed, cutting her off. He was already unbuttoning his seatbelt.

"Harry! Wait until we're closer."

The girl turned to face them when she heard the car approaching. She looked absolutely miserable. Her silky black hair was soaked, and her school clothes must have weighed twice as much as they would have normally. The moment Lily started to brake Harry threw open the passenger door and jumped out. He already had his coat off and was covering his sister as the door slammed behind them. Lily sighed and shifted the car into park. She could hear her son berating his sister, but by the time she had undone her own seatbelt he was already opening the back door for them.

"Well what would you have done?" Hollis was grumbling. "Hi, mum."

"Hello Holly. Sorry you had to walk in the rain."

"'s alright," the girl piped, but her jaw was chattering in the cold. Harry closed the door and sat close to her, as though trying to pass along some of his body heat.

"Well," said Lily, finding the knot in her stomach had eased some now that she could see her daughter was fine, merely wet and cold. "Let's get you home and into something dry. I think cocoa is called for."

Harry was glaring at her, for some reason—as though it were not his fault that his sister had been left on her own. She raised an eyebrow at him, and turned to drive the rest of the way to the manor. While she could remember what it was like at his age, she often found she could not understand what was going through her eight-year-old son's head. He was too different from the way she was now, she supposed. Maybe if she were still the same person she had been, she would understand, but she was not.

They made their way inside, Harry carrying his and Hollis' bags and Holly still bundled up in his coat, and she went to make a phone call. The real trouble of being disconnected from the floo was the amount of effort it took to communicate back to Britain. It was too far for Remus or Sirius to send a patronus, and she could not conjure one to reply anyways. Not that she tried, she simply knew. She would not be able to.

Eventually she had figured out how to connect Sirius and Remus up to the muggle phone lines. It had been difficult when they moved into Grimmauld Place following Walpurga Black's sudden death, as the house simply did not exist for anyone who had not been let in by Sirius. The wards had taken some charming to work around, but nothing like the manor, which was an old property stained with ancient magic.

Sirius had told her the manor had been the family's main property before they relocated to Britain, and after that barely anyone had used it. The only recent use he could think of was his brother's graduation trip that he knew his parents and their then only son had set several months aside for. Beyond that, however, it had gone at least twenty years without use before that, and the magical plants that lived on the property had made it their home in every sense. It had delighted Sirius that she wanted to install muggle technology on the plot, and he had gladly assisted her research in to get the lines to work—or, rather, he hadn't whined too loudly when Remus spent two weeks at the mansion to assist her in laying down the lines and their necessary charms.

It was Remus who picked up the phone, now. "Hello?"

"Hello, Remus," she said. "How's the sky?"

"Faring fine, but the wind's blowing North."

She relaxed. Of course she had no reason to suspect anyone else would be at the phone, but key phrases were a security precaution she had insisted on. "Sirius around?"

"No, not yet. He'll be back around six, I think. Is something wrong?"

"Not really," Lily said. She turned around to check the kitchen, and waved her wand to locate her children—both upstairs in their shared room, arguing, most likely. "Well," she said, sure they could not eavesdrop on her. "Actually there is a bit of a situation."

"No one's in danger, I presume," Remus said, after a missed beat.

"Of course not, or you would already know."

"Good. Sirius would have a heart attack. What happened?"

She checked the door of the kitchen again, and decided to walk down the hall to her rooms. The door was warded so she could hear anyone moving around outside, but they would give her some privacy against her children, and she wasn't sure she wanted them to hear this. "Harry had an incident at school."

"Accidental magic?"

"I don't think so." She shut the door and sat at the foot of her bed. "No, he put snakes in another boy's desk."

There was another moment's silence on the line. "Snakes?"

Lily laughed. "Yes. I do wonder if Sirius' school stories haven't got him associating snakes with bullying, the way he's always on about Slytherins."

"Really. We should probably get him to stop—it's probably no good for Harry, having all these presumptions forced onto him before he's even at Hogwarts."

Lily hummed. She didn't even want to think about Hogwarts—she still had a few years before she had to deal with the nightmare of trying to keep her son safe. Hogwarts, right in the hands of Dumbledore, not to mention all the dangerous things that seemed to find their way onto the grounds. Things that seemed to find their way into Sirius' stories, and make her children fantasize over the school. Hollis had even tried to build the castle out of Legos—and her brother had built off of that, expanding it with great enthusiasm. Well, she pushed it from her mind: a trouble for another day.

"The thing is," she said. "It wasn't just one or two snakes. The teacher said thirty-three."

"Merlin," said Remus. "That must have been a sight. Whose desk was it?"

Lily sighed, and let herself fall back into her bed. She felt like a teenager, gossiping with a friend on the phone like this. Of course, when she was a teenager none of the friends she had wanted to talk to had had phones.

"Some resident bully, apparently," she said. "It reminded me—"

"Of James as a boy?"

"Precisely," she said. "And since he goes by James in school… well, if he'd just messed up his hair a bit he would have looked precisely like his father, defiantly angry for us having caught him."

"How did they catch him?"

"Good question," she said. But she could guess. "He probably turned himself in."

"Well, there you go."

"What?"

"You're worried about him being too much like James was, I can tell. But you're also guessing right off the bat that he turned himself in. He wouldn't have done that—James, I mean. Half the thrill of the trouble we caused was knowing we had gotten away with it. Well, for James and Sirius, at least, and even I got caught up in it…"

"Actually," she said. "It wasn't James he reminded me of."

"No?"

She sighed again. "This kid, he broke Hollis' toy horse. The one Sirius gave her for her birthday, remember?"

"Sure."

"Harry, getting revenge like that, it actually reminded me of _Severus._"

"Snape?" His voice was thickly incredulous.

"I know, I know. You four didn't know him back then, so you probably just think of how he turned out," she said. "But when we were actually friends, way back when—he was so protective of me he'd do just about anything to get revenge if someone was mean to me, and…"

"Oh," said Remus. "So you're worried that Harry's too protective of Holly."

"Well, no—I don't know."

"We _have_ been pushing for him to be protective of his sister. I mean, it is best for him to bond to someone else like her, since he can't be around any other magical children. Even when you travel, there's the language barrier, and the need to hide your identities—"

"I know that." She rolled over onto her side in frustration, to watch the picture that sat alone on the wall of the bedroom. Sirius and Remus had given it to for Christmas, when they had moved in. It showed nothing more than water slipping back and forth over sand, but that it showed no matter the time of day or year. Now, with the rain outside, there were ripples in the water. "I want nothing more than for him to be close to his sister, Remus; you know that. They'll need each other, when they grow up. But…"

"The good does not come without the bad."

The children were coming down the stairs. Lily sighed and sat up. She caught her reflection in the window, clearer now that it was growing dark outside, and saw that her potion had almost worn off: her light freckles had separated out again. "They're coming down for cocoa," she told Remus.

"Should I tell Sirius to call later?"

She considered it.

"No, you two will be here the week after next, anyways," she said. "Better for Harry to have some distance before Sirius comes in, I think." Sirius was just as likely to laud her son's revenge efforts as he was to respond in any other way.

"You going to make him scrub cauldrons again?"

"It's a bit too cold out for de-gnoming."

"Probably. Have a good night, Lily."

"You too."

She sat with the receiver dead in her hands, until there was a knock at her door. "Come in," she called.

Harry stepped through the door. "Can you heat up the water?" he asked.

"Sure," she said, standing. Harry tilted his head, studying her as she came closer. "What is it?"

"You're back to normal," he said, and turned to go back into the kitchen.

"Mum," Hollis said, as soon as she too came through the doorway. "Harry broke the rules at school!"

"Yes, he did," she agreed.

"So is he going to get into trouble?"

Lily put the kettle of water and turned to regard her daughter. Hollis did not mean any vindication against her brother, it was clear: she was worried. She would try to hide it, of course; for a six-year-old she had an uncanny knack for trying to hide her feelings under brattish behavior, no doubt picked up from her brother. "Yes," Lily answered. "He is in a lot of trouble. He'll be scrubbing out my cauldrons until I think he's understood. You understand why?"

"But it was my fault!"

Harry just sighed and climbed down off the counter, where he had been reaching for the mugs in the cupboard. "Tell her she's being ridiculous, mum," he said. "She thinks she's somehow managed to turn me into some sort of—of—of miscreant."

"Miscreant?" Lily echoed. Harry's vocabulary was odd, as happened when one learned most of their words through reading. Severus had been the same way, but she shut down that train of thought before it could go further.

"Mum?" Harry said, slipping her mind back into the present. She blinked, and looked at Holly again. The girl's eyes were puffy and red; she wondered if they hadn't been all along.

"Of course it wasn't your fault, Hols," she said. "I hate to say it, but your brother has to take responsibility for his own mistakes. He has it in him to cause trouble, same as anyone else."

Harry huffed, working his jaw in irritation, but set down the mugs and clambered onto the second stool at the kitchen island, next to his sister.

"But he only did it because of my—my—"

Now she really did cry. Harry reached out and set his hand on her wet hair, of all places, like she were some animal he could sooth by petting. Lily wondered that so fragile-hearted a child had tried to hide her pain from her mother the day before. A mother knew how to read her daughter's upset, even if she couldn't say what had put her out of balance without context.

"Holly, Claude is a git and he deserved it," Harry said firmly.

Holly cried harder, biting her lip to hold back wailing.

"Harry is trying to say the blame lies on this _Claude _boy and himself, not you, Hollis," Lily said. The kettle behind her was on the verge of boiling, so she took it off the stove and poured water into the mugs. They were already waiting with cocoa powder; when had that happened? Harry must have fixed them.

"If I—I hadn't had m—my horse—"

"Then you wouldn't have had your horse," Lily said simply, cutting her daughter off. "You loved that horse, didn't you? And Claude took that away. He caused you pain, and Harry responded, if immaturely. That's the way it is, love. You're a victim. You're not to blame."

"But Harry isn't mean!" Holly cried. She finally let out a loud sob that pulled out the end of 'mean', like a word caught on the wind and carried away from her. Harry forced his stool to move under him so he could sit closer to his sister, pulling her into a hug. His eyes implored her, brow crinkling in his helplessness.

"Hols," he said softly. "It isn't your fault!"

Lily stepped around the island and knelt down next to Holly's stool. Harry let go of his sister reluctantly, but his hand stayed on her shoulder. The girl's tear-stained face looked down at Lily. Her dark grey eyes, much more suited to the girl's face than Lily's or Harry's, glittered.

"Hollis," Lily said gently. "Even the best people in the world have the ability to do bad things. What sets them apart is a feeling of remorse. Guilt. Knowing what they've done is wrong."

13.

"_And so, what I did was wrong, and I am very sorry_," the boy at the front of the classroom said.

Miss Lapointe studied his features carefully. She had come to realize, over the course of his public apology, that like his mother James' eyes seemed somehow out of place on his face. They weren't particularly ugly—even hidden behind the circular-framed glasses they were eyes that would have sat nicely, if only they weren't on _his_ face. She couldn't put her finger on it, but she was starting to realize that there were many things about the Jeannots you could not put a finger on.

She chalked it up to the fact that the Jeannots were from Britain and she had only left France once, on a brief trip to Germany. Even out here in the countryside, missing a link to the train system, most people had travelled around Europe at one point or another. But not her.

"_Very well," _she said, when she realized the boy was staring at her expectantly. _"You may go back to your seat."_ Claude, luckily, sat on the opposite side of the room, glaring daggers at his new enemy, or James would not have made it to his seat without being tripped. _"I expect you all have something to say about this, but it would be best if we put it aside. Of course James will be doing lines during yard time, but I would very much like the rest of us to move past this incident and on to better things. Maths, for example. If everyone would get out their workbooks…"_

She droned her way through the daily lesson without much thought, and let the students focus on their classwork while she watched from her desk. Claude and his friends kept looking up at her, clearly waiting for a good moment to pass notes, but she would not let them get away with trouble so easily. James worked quietly in his seat at the back, pausing every now and then to stare out the window.

So that was the sort of boy he was. The one always looking to another place, dreaming and waiting for something the rest of them would never know. She had tried, as a child, to understand her classmates who were that way, but she had always been focused in her studies, even if she hadn't had a clear direction.

Outside, rain was dousing the grounds thoroughly. It was a matter of time before the entire dirt playfield turned to mud. The water ran down the windows, distorting the light filtering in onto the face of the boy she watched. He would follow a drop run down into a corner and turn back to his work, then back to the window. As long as he got his work done, she could say nothing against his lapses in concentration; for all she knew his mind was working away regardless of where his eyes sat. Once, he even caught her looking at him. His expression remained completely impassive as he looked back down to his page without acknowledging that moment's connection.

Through his apology and now, she had not felt the boy had any true remorse for his actions. He had spoken eloquently, for a boy of his age, but his words sounded empty. But she could not get a read on this child, and there was any number of reasons why. He was from a family of Brits and she from France. He was lacking a father, and the father was reputed, at least among the staff members at the meeting that morning, to be a man of no good, although perhaps that was more a matter of speculation based on the boy's obviously mixed race. But maybe it was something about the child himself; perhaps there was something inherently wrong with him. His eyes and the strangeness with the snakes (and the _chair) _notwithstanding, she had come to realize over the last day that even after two months of class she knew next to nothing about this boy. She wouldn't have known that his father was not in the picture, had it not been noted in his records. His marks, when she looked in her books, were just shy of perfect when it came to mathematics and literature, but he never seemed to engage. Class art projects resulted in mediocre childish work. His presentation style was to the point, as though he wanted nothing more than to sit down, like most of the children. He had no clear friendships with any of his classrooms, but until now had been on reasonably stable terms with all of them.

Miss Lapointe just about jumped out of her seat when the intercom broke through her musing.

"_Attention, attention. Due to the severe weather, there will be no yard time today."_

The children groaned. Miss Lapointe bit the side of her cheek to hold back her own response, which would have been less than mature. _"Settle down," _she urged the class instead. She glanced at the clock. The hour was nearly spent, and they would be having lunch soon. She stood and wrote three new problems on the board, and had them all write their answers on scrap paper. They were allowed to leave when they handed in their work.

James handed his over fourth. She analyzed his handwriting—scratchy where he had done his work but carefully neat where his answers were found. Though the attention to the specific presentation was odd, it would have been more of a warning had the whole page been so neat. As it was, the effort to make himself presentable suggested the boy had clarity towards the illegible nature of his writing, but did not consider it shameful that it showed, so long as he put in effort where it mattered most.

Perhaps she was overthinking this a bit much. She rubbed her brow and shuffled the papers together. The boy did not seem to be any sort of psychopath; he had merely been protecting his sister and doled out a poorly constructed vengeance. He had come forward, but not until it was severely inconvenient on his classmates that he stay quiet, so it couldn't be for the attention.

She followed the last child out of the classroom and into the common area of the hall, where the students were gathering to eat. She quickly spotted her usual troublemakers: Claude and his friends were up on the walkway that circled the second floor and opened up to look down on the main floor. They sat with their feet dangling through the railing, faces in identical scowls. James she had to search for; he was tucked away in one of the window benches in the corner. To her surprise, he was not alone. She would have thought his delinquency would have estranged the boy from the rest of the class, but apparently not.

The two boys with him were Nicolas and Mathis, who themselves were not particularly close, so the trio seemed odd. Miss Lapointe kept an eye on them as she made her rounds through the room, and settled down with one of the other teachers on duty at a table close enough to the window to halfway hear the boys' conversation.

Although he was not particularly out-going or well liked, Mathis' voice was clear and loud, so she could hear his part of the conversation easily. "_The point is," _he was saying, _"That you got back at Claude, and you're the only one in our class who has even tried, so Nicolas figured he'd stick to you."_

Whatever James said was much softer, but he did not look particularly happy. For some reason he kept looking out the window. Miss Lapointe looked out past him, but there was nothing but the rain and the next wing, where the lower forms were housed.

"_W—well, I—" _Nicolas squeaked. _"I th—th—think it was pretty cool, cool, what you d—did."_

"_Cool?" _James demanded, louder now. _"It was not cool."_

"_I—I meant—meant—"_

"_He meant standing up for your sister like that," _said Mathis. _"I mean, I heard all about what happened from Martel, and someone had to do something. I would have tried to get back at someone if they tried to hurt Martel. Maybe not that way, exactly, but that just goes to show that you are unique."_

"_Unique," _James said flatly. His voice was lost again as a group of girls started shrieking, and Miss Lapointe and the other teacher had to leave their seats to sort out an issue of a piece of flying lunch meat.

When she returned, the boys seemed to have come to some sort of agreement. Nicolas was sitting at the opposite end of the bench from James, and Mathis was cross-legged on the floor, and they were all eating their lunches. Miss Lapointe was troubled—or perhaps merely confused. The two had sought James out as what—a bodyguard from Claude? Yet Nicolas had pressed himself as far down the bench from James as possible, and his stammer was more pronounced than usual in his interactions with the boy. Mathis, on the other hand, seemed unconcerned with the whole situation, as he generally was when it did not involve football, but he was there nonetheless. Why?

"_Well_," said the other teacher, lowering herself back into her seat. "_Look at that. Your trouble-maker seems to have gained a following."_

"_For better or worse,"_ Miss Lapointe said dryly. "_I just hope they don't start a—how to say—rivalry? With Claude and his, I mean."_

"_Oh, a bit of student rivalry is always good_." The older teacher chuckled at Miss Lapointe's incredulous face. Mrs. Canon had been teaching at the school for nearly twenty years. Miss Lapointe had, to her extreme relief, not been in the elderly woman's class, but she had started school when Mrs. Canon had started her position, and the thought was bizarre. "_Children are quite good at solving their own problems, I'll have you know, Liz. Maybe if that poor boy has a friend in your snake-child he will grow a spine and stand up for himself. Claude's group will either have to find new fodder or quit their trend."_

"_Or maybe I'll have another incident on my hands, and maybe next time James won't come forward_."

"_James_," Mrs. Canon echoed. "_Don't be so quick to brand him a repeat offender. He seems like a nice enough child, just quiet. The quiet ones always have a bit of trouble finding their footing along the way."_

14.

"That cauldron's not going to get done any time soon at that rate, Harry."

Harry scowled, but put a bit more strength into his scrubbing. He _hated _scrubbing cauldrons. The cleaning potion made his hands prune, and the sound of the steel-bristled scrub brush against caked pewter was horrible.

"Can't you just do this with magic, mum?"

"You should always clean your cauldrons yourself. It's the only way to be sure it is done properly, and keeps you familiar with the condition of the metal. You know that."

"So clean it yourself," he grumbled.

"Harry," Lily chided, stepping out of the storage closet.

They were in the basement at the manor, a low-ceilinged stone room with windows near the ceiling, ground-level to the back walk. His mum had cleaned the place up when they had moved in, turning it into a functioning potions lab. She was a prolific brewer. Along one wall there were set-ups for eight cauldrons to be left for slow-brew, though usually only one or two were working. Now there were six, steaming and fogging up the windows. Harry supposed it didn't matter—it was dark outside, late enough that Holly had gone to bed—but he would have liked them clear anyways. Or open, maybe. The entire room smelled strongly of mint—mugwort; Lily had made him bring some in from the greenhouse—and something else that was making his eyes water. Of course his mother wouldn't open the window. Something could get in, and besides, the smells helped her focus. Or so she said, and That Was That.

"What did you even brew in this?" Harry asked, glaring at a particularly stubborn spot.

"It was another experiment. I'm mixing aging potion and some of my hair-changing formulas. I'm hoping that we can get Hollis to pass as a bit older, maybe a bit more Asian…"

He looked up, watching her pick up a silver knife and chopping a pile of leaves with a nearly mechanical speed. The leaves were from one of the plants he was not allowed to touch—she had set aside the purplish-blue flowers. "Are we going travelling again?"

"I think we'll go to South America on hols," Lily replied.

"South America?"

"Yes, there's a group in Chile that—is there something wrong with South America?"

"No, I liked Brazil but… I thought we were going to spend Christmas with Siri and Rem."

"Oh. We usually do that, don't we? I think we're due for a bit of a change."

Her chopping stopped as she used the flat of her blade to transfer the leaves into the potion she was working on. Harry watched as she stirred—three times right, three times left, three right, until—

"Ow!" said Harry. He looked down at his hand. He'd been so intent on watching his mum's work he hadn't been paying attention to his own, and had hit his knuckle against one of the rough bits, and had a cut on his finger.

"Don't suck on that," his mum warned, and he aborted the movement he had been making to glare at her. She was still stirring, watching the potion very carefully while she added the flowers one by one, producing small poofs up silver steam each time.

"Well, what should I do, then?"

"You're old enough—"

She got distracted when one of the clouds of steam went up higher than the others, marring her from view. Harry sighed. It was impossible to hold a conversation with his mother when she was brewing. He went into the attached loo and washed his hands, finding a plaster in the cabinet to wrap around the offended finger. When he came back out, Lily was floating the cauldron over to one of the empty stations. He went back to the cauldron he had been working and dumped half her flask of cleaning potion in, just to spite her. It hissed as it ate through the spot that had hurt his finger, and when he looked closely, he realized that it was starting to eat into the pewter. Quickly he started scrubbing again, hoping to stop it before it melted a hole.

"That's enough, Harry," Lily called after a few minutes. Most of the grime was gone, but Harry was pretty sure that half the metal was, too. He looked up nervously, but his mum was standing over a different cauldron now, a small silver one. "Come here and try this."

Harry casually dumped the fluid sloshing around the cauldron onto the floor as he set it down, making the stones hiss, and hurried over. Lily held out a deep-bowled spoon with a thick blue potion on it. He grimaced at the sight—slimy, like polyjuice was, and that had a reputation for tasting horrible. "Do I have to?" he asked, but he took the spoon and tipped the potion into his mouth. It was sweet, but had the texture of the cookie dough Harry had tried before Remus had finished adding the oil, making his mouth feel dry.

He waited, but he didn't feel anything different. His mum took back the spoon and handed him another. This potion he knew. Watery and red, it tasted a bit like vinegar. The change was much clearer—he began to grow, and there was the particular sensation of bones clicking into place that always came along with aging potion. She hadn't given him much, but she brewed it strong, and it was enough that he now reached her shoulders. When his mum nodded thoughtfully and started taking notes onto one of her ever-present scrolls, Harry took it as permission to go back into the loo to look into the mirror.

A teenaged girl glared back at him. "I look ridiculous," he called into the other room, pulling at the t-shirt that had been loose a minute before, now tight around his—her—no, he was still—his neck. And his _chest. _Well. He poked at the fleshy protrusions—then suddenly had the horrifying thought that he was looking like his _sister _would in a few years. He grimaced, and forced himself to lean in a bit closer and focus on his face. The bones were a bit narrower than they usually were when he aged up, more similar to how his face was now. But he still looked like a boy that had just been thrown into a slightly more feminine body.

"Harry, get back in here."

"Mum, this is a crap disguise," he complained. He turned to go back in to the other room, and was suddenly glad he had been wearing his loose night things, because his _hips. _It was hard to walk straight, like that. He had been a girl before, but she'd never combined it with an aging potion before, and he wasn't sure he liked it. If he was ever going to pass as a teenage girl, he'd have a lot to get used to, first.

"It does need some work," Lily agreed. She waved her wand and a measuring tape went flying off the counter to hover along side Harry as he walked, measuring every which way.

"Please tell me I'm not going to look like this while we're in Chilly."

"_Chile. _And no, it's not for now. I'm just making notes for when you're older."

"I thought you said it was pointless to make notes while I'm still growing."

"Stretch your arms out. It won't give us anything accurate, but at least a general idea. You know the plan."

Harry rolled his eyes. The Plan was his mum's way of justifying her odd pastime of making stashes of supplies around the world. Whenever they went on trips, she would find somewhere to supplies, Just In Case. If something did happen to her, Harry had no clue how he was supposed to get him and Holly to Hong Kong or Albania to get to a stash, let alone remember where it was.

Besides, it wouldn't matter, in a few years. He would be at Hogwarts, so if something happened to his mum, he could take his sister to hide there. Sirius had told him that the Dark Git (as he not-so-affectionately called You-Know-Who) had never managed to directly attack Hogwarts, and that he was afraid of Dumbledore, so even if the headmaster was a Right Bastard, it was also a safe place to hide if it came down to it.

"Mum," he said, ignoring the prodding of the tape measurer with his mind on Hogwarts. "Can't we go back to London?"

"We'll see Sirius and Remus soon enough," she said. "Remember, they'll be here in a few weeks, when Sirius has his time off."

"I mean, can't we _move _back to London? Permanently?"

She looked up from her scroll, hand pausing. In the bright lighting she had rigged the lab with, her eyes were especially green. Harry envied them. If he looked really closely in a mirror, he swore he could see a bit of green around the edges of his irises, but mostly they were just a dull, dark grey, that made him look like a lifeless muggle doll. Even Holly's eyes, nearly as dark as his, had more green. And her eyes looked normal, because she didn't have to wear glasses like he did.

"Harry," Lily said. "You know why we live here. London isn't safe."

"But I could have friends there," he said. "Actual friends. And not your coworker's stupid kids."

"What's wrong with Maria's kids?"

"You should have seen the look they gave me when I said I'm going to Hogwarts. _Why go there when you could go to Beauxbaton's? It is much better."_

"Well, it is a fine school. I've considered sending you there, actually."

"You wouldn't!"

"No, I don't like how their curriculum is structured. Honestly, it would be best if I just taught you myself."

"Mum!"

She looked back down at her scroll, noting something, and Harry groaned. Homeschool? He wouldn't put it past her.

"Mum, I want to go back to England. We can go to muggle school there, I don't care, I just want to spend time with _someone _my age! You know, like normal kids do? Someone not—not muggle."

"You have your sister," Lily said.

"She's _six."_

"And your friends at school."

Harry rolled his eyes. Friends. Is that what they would be called? She couldn't name one, in any case, and Harry wasn't sure he could, either. He'd been close to Claude (_Claude, who liked British movies and didn't have a mum)_ for a while, when they first started school, but he couldn't exactly invite Claude _(Claude, who laughed over Holly's broken horse)_ back to the manor, and then after last summer Claude _(Claude, who screamed when he saw the snakes) _had started acting mean. Harry hadn't really gotten close to anyone after that.

"Look, Harry," Lily said, setting aside her scroll at last. "Life's never going to be easy for you. We have to be very careful, because there are people who would take advantage of you because of your name. But just because they don't know about your magic doesn't mean they can't be your friends. I had many friends before I went to Hogwarts, and none of them knew about my magic."

"Yeah? Well at least your friends knew your _name."_

Lily sighed, checking her watch. "I think it's time for bed. Tomorrow I'll have you scrub down the work bench—it's been getting sandy recently."

Harry groaned again. The bench looked fine to him, but he wasn't sure what she meant by sandy, either, so maybe it wasn't. "Aren't you going to change me back?"

"Hm?" She looked up. "Oh, it should wear off in a few hours. It doesn't really matter, you'll be asleep anyways."

15.

While the other children remained in the common areas, and the teachers who had taken their lunch breaks while the children ate returning with indoor games, Miss Lapointe returned to the classroom with James. She sat him in the front row, at another child's desk, and write one line over and over again: _I am not to respond to bullying with bullying. _He wrote the whole period, until the bell rang and the students came back in, and she took his page and had him return to his seat.

The handwriting, she noticed as she glanced over it while waiting for the children to get settled, was the same neat print all the way through. No scribbling. She wondered what a psychologist would say about that. She set the paper aside, and tried to focus on her class.

As the week went on, the rain let up, and the other children were let back out into the yard for play time. Each day the boy's handwriting started out that same, careful hand. By halfway through Friday, however, his script had slanted horribly, and he was writing in jerky movements and had to go back to correct words.

"_Mr. Jeannot_," she said, when the yard time was halfway through already. "W_hy on earth are you writing so messily?"_

"_My hand hurts, Miss_," he said simply, and went on writing.

Miss Lapointe sighed and looked out the window. The sounds of children at play, laughter and shrieks and thuds of footballs against chain-link fences drifted through. It was sunny out, though most of the children ran around with scarves trailing out behind them like insect wings.

"_That's enough_," she found herself saying. She looked back down at James, who stared back with his mouth half-open. "_Has the point set in?"_

"_Yes, Miss_," he said. Of course, what else would he say?

"_Put on your jacket and go run around outside," _she said, picking up his paper. _"You look like you could use some muscle on you."_

As the boy hurried to the cloakroom, glancing at her like he expected the teacher to change her mind, Miss Lapointe sat down at her desk and pensively watched the children at play. She had not been planning to release the boy to yard time until the following week, but for some reason the sight of his silent writing day after day seemed to clash too harshly with the clamor from outside.

As she watched the grounds, the room suddenly felt very stuffy, and though it was November and quite cold outside she opened a window to reach fresher air. She stood, feeling the sting of the dry air against her cheeks for a minute, watching without really seeing, as she had before, and it seemed like several long minutes had passed when she turned away. The sound of the cloakroom door shuddered the walls, drew her back into herself, and she rubbed her eyes. She had not been sleeping well. She must simply have been tired—yes, she would go to the staff room, and pick up some coffee. She made to leave, and turned off the lights, but a voice stopped her from opening the door.

"_So, she let you out?"_

The voice was unmistakably Claude's, and clearly very close.

"_What's it to you?" _

That was James, no doubt. Without turning on the light, Miss Lapointe crept closer to the windows.

"_I'm thinking she let you out too soon."_

"_You're thinking? Congratulations. That must be difficult. No wonder you're lurking around the door, you might even be ready to go into the classroom and pay attention for once."_

"_Shut up, Jeannot!"_

She couldn't see the boys directly without moving in view of the windows, but one of the metal frames reflected the children clearly. It was James, alone, of course, having just come out of the cloak room, facing Claude and his two friends, Gabriel and Lucas.

She considered her options. The responsible thing to do would be to go outside and stop the situation before anything happened. On the other hand, James' and Mrs. Jeannot's words of how little she had done to stop Claude echoed in her ears, as they had been every night. James was clearly willing to be involved directly, and she had faith that she could act quickly enough if the situation got _physical. _The window was already open, after all, and she was young enough that she could get away with jumping out.

"_What do you want, Claude?"_

"_I want you to admit to what you did."_

"_What? Put snakes in your desk? If you hadn't noticed, I did admit to that. And apologize, _very _publicly."_

One of Claude's friends—Lucas—grabbed the larger boy's arm before he could charge forward. In the reflection, James did not move at all. Was he really so confident? Claude was several centimeters taller than he—or was it just bravado?

"_What are you going to do?_" he asked. _"Punch me right here in front of the classroom?"_

"_It would serve you right!"_

"_Well, go on then. Do it. If you're not too afraid. I might, I don't know, hiss at you."_

The sound the boy made then was certainly snake-like. If she hadn't known better, she would have thought there was one of the creatures nearby. But it was just the boy, that strange boy. She swallowed her unease.

Another figure ran past the windows, so quickly that Miss Lapointe barely had time to press herself against the wall to hold her cover. Nicolas' back filled most of the narrow reflection, and Mathis ran by a moment later. Though not prone to such things, Miss Lapointe swore under her breath. If this broke into a fight between all six of these boys, she wouldn't be able to get them apart so easily. She straightened up and prepared to move, but then remembered Mrs. Canon's words—_children are quite good at solving their own problems, I'll have you know, Liz._

Before she could make up her mind, Nicolas spoke, through his gasps for air. _"Leave him alone!"_

Claude's other friend, Gabriel, laughed. _"What are you going to do, _Piggy? _Squeal for help?"_

"_I mean it!"_

Miss Lapointe realized suddenly what was happening. Nicolas, shy, sweet, and vulnerable Nicolas, was standing up to his tormenters without so much as a stutter.

"_Yeah,_" said Mathis. _"Leave him alone. You think you're so big and brave, but look at you. Trying to scare James while he's all on his own? Trying to insult Nicolas? You're just three idiots, and now there's three of us, too. Leave James alone."_

There was a moment of silence, with Lucas' hand tightening on Claude's arm and Gabriel trying to make himself look bigger, and for the barest second Miss Lapointe's gut dropped in fear that arms were about to start swinging—

—but then Claude laughed. His friends stared, then started laughing with him; fake, nervous tones.

"_Look, _Piggy _and _Piss-Pants _are here to back up J—" _Claude paused. _"To back up _Prat."

It struck Miss Lapointe as odd that those were the words Claude knew, of the whole of English. Piggy, Piss-Pants, Prat. Why the boy had chosen his insults in English, when the boy they stood against was well-known as being a Brit—

"Piggy _and _Piss-Pants_ and _Pat!" Gabriel echoed gleefully.

"'Prat' _you idiot," _Claude said.

"Piggy _and _Piss-Pants _and _Prat!" said Lucas.

They all laughed, and while they laughed, turned and fled. She supposed they thought their laughter covered up their cowing retreat. Then again, she supposed she and the three other boys were the only witnesses to their escape. She let out a long breath of relief.

"_Are you alright, James?" _Mathis asked.

"_Yes, I'm fine. I—thanks."_

"_N—no prob—b—blem. Th—they shouldn't, shouldn't call you _Pat."

"Prat," James corrected automatically, but in the reflection he looked put-off. _"He shouldn't call you _Piggy."

"_I—I don't know, know, know what it—t—t m—means."_

"Piggy? _You know, uh, pig." _He paused. _"But it's—it's from a book I read. When we first started the year, I…"_

"_A book?" _Mathis asked.

"_Yeah. _Lord of the Flies—_how do you say, His Majesty of the Flies? My uncle left it around. Mum was mad I picked it up, but I'll read anything."_

"_Who—who's _Piggy,_ then?" _asked Nicolas.

James ran his fingers through his fringe, patting it down. _"A fat, what's the word, _asthmatic_, kid. He dies at the end."_

"_O—oh."_

"_I liked him," _James said firmly. _"He had glasses and was almost blind without them. And he was the most logical, if a bit, uh, stupid."_

"_Ummmmmmm."_

"_What about _Piss-Pants?" Mathis asked. _"Did you suggest that one, too?"_

"_No," _said James quietly. _"That was all Claude. You know his dad…"_

They all looked at each other a bit, and shrugged whatever he was implying off. If Miss Lapointe were not their teacher, she would want to shrug it off, too. As it was, her mind was racing through options, from as vile as abuse to as harmless as watching British television."

"_So why was it just you?" _Mathis asked. _"And shouldn't you be doing lines, anyways?"_

"_Lapointe said I could leave."_

"_Y—you were really b—b—brave, standing up to—to—to all th—three of th—them like th—that."_

"_Brave?" _James echoed. _"Are you kidding me? Look, my hand's still shaking."_

"_You have to be scared to be brave, it's the definition," _Mathis pointed out. _"But I don't know if you were brave or just stupid. Shouldn't you have, oh, run? Or shouted for help? If Claude had punched you…"_

Miss Lapointe swore that for a moment James' eyes flickered to the same reflection that she was watching. It couldn't be, though—or it could, but she wouldn't have been able to tell; the reflection was too small. _"I'll tell you later,"_ he said, and turned towards the field, words far from the ears of their hidden teacher.

She was a grown woman, but for some reason Miss Lapointe's heart was pounding against her chest, and she felt curiously as though she were again a child, eavesdropping on adult conversations that the children were not supposed to hear. She let her self sink into the wall, and for a moment, had the brief and strange idea that it would open up and swallow her whole.

* * *

><p>Thank you for your comments, everyone! It's interesting to hear how you guys feel about different characters.<p>

One note that I realize I should have added at the beginning of the story, but did not since I'm cross-posting to AO3 which has the tagging system: I'm hella gay. Likewise, many (though not all) of these characters are going to be hella gay. I doubt we'll ever have anything directly explicit (far too easily embarrassed for that, sorry) but there will be many characters who, over the course of their lives, have feelings for people of the same gender. The issue of gender is also to be raised—so if you think of gender in strictly binary or strictly birth sex equating gender type ways, this probably isn't the story for you.

Anyhow, I doubt this will be an issue for most of you, so! Until next time… lots of love, m'dears


	6. Entr'acte I

16.

Remus Lupin woke up on the 24th of November, 1989, and after a moment wished he had simply stayed asleep.

The sheets, on the bright side, were glorious. He closed his eyes again and focused on the softness, forgiving Sirius for the expense. Puffskein wool woven with murtlap silk—a highly indulgent purchase that Sirius had ordered without a second thought. _Don't be such a muddy wand, Moony. If I'm going to sleep on it, I want it to be soft. _It was not without guilt that Remus now sank into the same sheets, knowing they cost more than he had made in the last month, but all the same, his skin was aching, _raw_, and the sheets were the first he had not torn away from his healing skin in many years.

He remembered, as always, the hospital wing. When he was younger, he always woke with the memory of the first painful transformation fresh in his mind, but that had changed at Hogwarts. One morning he had woken up wrapped around a warm, soft body, and opened his eyes to see the black fur of the large dog Sirius' animagus form had proven to be. Peter was asleep in one chair, and James was sitting awake with his wand tapping against his knee. The dog Sirius' body heat had been uncomfortable, and the weight and scratchiness of his fur painful, but for some reason he had not been able to move Sirius off, and had somehow fallen back to sleep squeezed between the dog and the mattress. When he had awoken again, he had been alone, and he had never asked his friends to clarify whether or not they had actually been there, but somehow the memory, real or not, had been enough to keep Remus on this side of sanity so far.

Downstairs, the phone rang.

He could hear Sirius answer it, and his words through the walls of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, were a tenor hum. There was a brief pause, then footsteps on the stairs, and Remus forced his protesting limbs to slide back up the pillows, until he was in something of an upright position. Sirius came through the doors.

"Moony," he said in surprise, and immediately began to fuss. Remus knew that Sirius would always fuss, especially the morning after the Night. "How are you feeling?" Sirius asked. He rushed over. "Here—let me—you shouldn't be moving around just yet."

"Sirius," said Remus, ignoring the way his skin burned where Sirius touched it, forcing himself to lean forward so Sirius could add in another pillow. His voice rasped out of his throat as though it were being scraped along a gravel path. "Is that my dad on the phone?"

"You don't _have_ to speak with him, you know."

"Sirius. Please?"

Sirius sighed and held out the handheld, but did not let go when Remus took it. Remus looked up at him and waited, watching the way Sirius' jaw shifted as his grey eyes scanned Remus' face. "I'll bring you tea," he said, letting go at last, and followed the extended cord back out the door.

"Hello?" Remus said when his shaking arm brought the phone up to his ear.

"_Remus_?"

"Hi, dad." Remus leaned back into the pillows. "How are you?"

"_Remus, you—fine. I'm fine_."

"How's Auckland?"

"Warm. It's summer here."

"Did the glamrams give birth?"

"Yes. There's three healthy lambs tearing up my garden. Terrors."

"Glad to hear—"

The words caught in his throat and he coughed, making his body shudder into the mattress.

"_Remus_?"

"Yes?"

There was a moment's silence on the line, then Lyall cleared his throat. "_Your aunt called_."

"Felicity?"

"_Yes. She lost her husband, you know. She asked after you_."

"What did you…?"

"_I said you were in London, looking for a job."_

"Oh."

The line pulled—Sirius must have hit it—and soon after the man came through the doorway, a tea tray levitated in front of him. Remus smiled weakly as Sirius poured him a cup, mixing in cream and three spoons of sugar. He tried to imagine Sirius doing something like that back when they were in school, and had to control himself not to laugh. "Thank you."

"_What?"_

"Sirius made tea."

"_Oh." _Another bit of silence as Sirius made his own cup and settled into an armchair by the window wall. With a flick of his wand the section of curtains by his chair opened up, revealing a bit of forest for Sirius to stare out into. Remus knew that Sirius would always be a difficult topic with his father. The first time he had told Lyall he thought he was in love had also been the last time they directly spoke of the matter.

"_How is the potion working?"_

"Still the same. Lily's trying to work around the nerve damage."

"_Has she improved it at all?"_

"It's…" He looked at his hand, shaking the tea. "Coming along."

"_She's a brilliant girl."_

"Yes."

"_She'll figure it out."_

"Probably."

"_Remus, I'm—"_

Remus took a deep breath, ignoring the way his chest protested the expansion.

"_You should never have had to deal with any of this."_

"Dad. You can't keep blaming yourself." Across the room, Sirius stood from his seat. Remus kept his eyes on his tea.

"_If I hadn't…"_

"It's not your fault," Remus said. "Isn't it getting late there?"

"_Remus—"_

"Get some sleep, dad."

"_Alright. Good—good morning."_

"Goodnight."

The line went dead just as Sirius reached the bed, and he handed over the phone without a word, ending the conversation the same way it always did. Sirius set it on the table and sat down on the edge of the bed, guiding the shaking hand and cup of tea up to Remus' lips. There would be potions in the tea, Remus knew, but he was too tired to protest.

"Are you okay?" he asked instead. "I seem to remember you running into a tree…"

"Oy," Sirius grunted. "Am _I _okay?"

"I think we're both generally aware of my state," Remus said, as lightly as he could muster. He took another sip of the tea before Sirius could make him, tasting the bitter tones of willow tincture in the potion brewed with the tea, even through the sugar. Already he was loosing track of the pain in his ribs. He set the cup down next to the phone and closed his eyes for a moment, taking stock of his body.

"Kreacher is making breakfast," said Sirius. "So I think I'll floo over to Bogle's Bake and pick us up something."

"I'm sure whatever he makes will be fine."

"I already sent an order."

Remus opened his eyes to study out the window. The choice for it to look out on a forest had been a good one, he thought. Even on a dismal day like this, with rain creeping through in patches in the foliage, it was a relaxing sight that distracted from the negative energy in Grimmauld Place they were still struggling to remove.

Sirius leaned in close, making Remus freeze, but it was for nothing more than a light kiss on the cheek. Remus swallowed his uncertainty and offered what he hoped was a passing smile as Sirius stood up. "Drink your tea," Sirius said. "And try to rest. If you're asleep I won't wake you up. You look like you could use it. The hung-over rocker look doesn't suit you, Moony."

"Be sure to leave a tip," Remus said. "You always order so much, it must be a hassle."

"They're _happy_ to get big orders. It's how they stay in business."

"Sirius."

"I _know, _Moony. Ten percent. Bloody yank."

Remus sighed, but Sirius's footsteps on the stairs were already drifting through the open door. He had left the phone on the table, so the curling cord once again shook before it suddenly zoomed out of the room, sailing back to its dock down below.

When Sirius returned, not ten minutes later, the teacup was empty, but Remus was not asleep. Shaking fingers were struggling with shirt buttons and he was leaned against the armchair to stay upright, but Remus had gotten out of bed and nearly dressed.

"Moony, you stubborn idiot," Sirius said, stepping forward to fix up the last few buttons. "You're supposed to be resting."

"I'm _fine."_

"You're hardly on your feet."

"Sirius, if we're going to see the kids today, I can't exactly stay in bed."

"We don't have to go today, you know."

"You've only got the week off, and don't tell me you haven't been looking forward to this all month. You've bought them three presents each, haven't you?"

"Well, yeah, but they're not going to be here for Christmas, and—"

Remus stepped back out of Sirius' reach and retrieved his coat from the top of the dresser. "Did you get breakfast?" he asked, running his hands over the soft fabric.

"Yeah. It's in the kitchen."

"Okay. Lets eat," he said, and started to walk, focusing on making his body remember it knew how.

When the world slipped out from under him, it was not because he fell, but Sirius sweeping him up into his arms. It _hurt._ Normally he could handle Sirius' tendency for roughhousing, but so soon after the Night, his gentle grip was like being held with a snake curled tightly around his body, constricting into bruises. Sirius did not seem to notice, hurrying towards the stairs, the look of purpose on his face gleaming as it always did when he found something he could do to _help._ Remus grit his teeth, and wished he could let him keep that feeling, but—

"Sirius. Put me down."

Each bump of stairs was like being kicked by a horse.

"Really, Moony?"

_Bump. _

"Look at you, you're practically grey."

_Bump. _Remus felt his chest tightening, like he was going to puke, but all he'd had was the tea—

"Sirius."

"You shouldn't be on your feet."

_Bump._

"You're going to fall and hit your head and—"

"Sirius, _please."_

He squeezed his eyes shut at the last step, and then they halted entirely. For the moment, it was easier to breathe, to force his throat to open and let in the gasps of air.

A whisper: _"Moony?"_

The world stopped closing in on him. He forced his eyes back open. Sirius looked, in a word, terrified. Automatically, Remus tried to smile, though smiling was the last thing he wanted to do. "Put me down," he whispered back.

The gentleness with which Sirius eased him down was lost as Remus sagged into the railing. There was only one more flight of stairs left, he saw. If he took it slow—

His arm shot out before he even processed Sirius reaching out to help him upright, and the man froze. Sirius' dark curls hung around his face with a certain weight, as though he had been out in the rain, and his grey eyes were frozen open wider than they had been in years.

He tried to smile again, ignoring the way his cheeks protested the extra effort. "Just… let me do it. Okay?"

"Okay," Sirius echoed. He paused. "I could levitate you."

Remus swallowed the urge to balk. "Could you heat up more tea?" he compromised. Sirius, however, did not take the peace offering as it was worth. Remus could see the way concern worked itself into the creases in Sirius' brow. "The Earl Grey would be lovely," he prompted, hoping that Sirius would do anything, just move.

Sirius nodded, and practically ran down the stairs. There was a youthful bounce in his quick steps that Remus envied, as right now he felt closer to eighty than twenty-eight. But Sirius paused on the landing. "It's worse this time, isn't it?" he asked, not turning around.

Remus took as deep a breath as he could. "Yes."

"Are you going to tell Lily?"

Remus didn't know. On the one hand, she could not fix the potion if she did not know about the change. On the other, she had two children, a job, and her political efforts to deal with already. He could just tell her the potion had behave the same as usual, and she could continue to try new brewing methods without devoting too much time to worrying over him.

Sirius translated his silence and stepped into the kitchen, leaving Remus to struggle with the stairs. He managed the first, then the second, before he had to stop and sit on the dusty wood, easing himself down bit by bit. The nerve potion was stopping his skin from burning, but it made his limbs feel like bruised rubber. Pulling himself up from the last step made the hall spin, but he let his feet carry him into the kitchen to sink into the first chair, which Sirius had already pulled from the table and set a steaming cup of tea in front of.

"I'll call Lily," Sirius said as he started pulling pastries from the familiar wire basket brought back from the bakery. "We'll go over tomorrow, instead."

Remus traced the silver lining of the edge of the teacup with one finger. It was one of the ones he had reclaimed from his mother's collection when Lyall made his move to New Zealand permanent. It was his favorite, really—the silver seeped down from the edges in cracks in the porcelain, holding it together, like the maker had mimed _kintsugi _attempting to recover something that had been broken beyond what anyone else would have thought worth saving.

"I'll be fine by this evening, Sirius," he said.

"Eat something."

"Sirius."

The man's jaw worked. "Tonight, then," he allowed at last, seeing that Remus would not be moved. "But we'll go over late, when the kids are about asleep."

Remus lifted the cup, twisting it for inspection. It was one of the few things he had brought to Sirius' family home, and he worried about it in the care of Kreacher. The old house elf was thoroughly unpleasant when it came to him, both for the ill luck of being a half-blood and the fate of being a werewolf. But for the risk of leaving something so precious in the spiteful elf's path, it was still a relief to have a piece of home with him.

"We should fix up this room next," he said, taking a sip of the tea and reaching for a sausage roll. "Think we can afford a skylight?"

Sirius studied the dusty cast-iron chandelier. "If I can tear that out of the ceiling? Moony, I'd let you turn this place into a greenhouse."

17.

Harry and Holly sat on the front porch, feet dangling between the railing posts. The cups of hot cocoa their mother had made them before she left were empty, sitting on the ground beside them, and Holly yawned for the twelfth time.

"You don't think something happened to them?" she asked her brother. "Mum always says it's a pain to drive in the dark…"

"They're fine, Hols. Remember how long it takes to use the international floo? They probably just got stuck in line."

The light from the front hall was just enough for Harry to read by, if he held his book up high enough, but his eyes had gotten tired and he had taken off his glasses, turning the night into a dark blur. He wrapped the blanket they shared tighter around himself, glad that it was not raining or windy, just cold.

"Harry?"

"What?"

"How'd you get the snakes into Claude's desk?"

Harry smiled. In the aftermath of his revenge, that had been the question around the school. He'd heard various stories of what happened. His favorite was the one where he'd not only put in the thirty-three grass snakes, but somehow also filled Claude's bag with a python. He was only surprised that it had taken Holly this long to ask, although the whole incident was a bit of a touchy subject for her.

"Have you told mum about my magic?" he asked.

"No. Did you do it with magic? Because if you did, I'm telling mum. We're not supposed—"

"I didn't use magic, I just talked."

"Talked?"

Harry stretched out his arms and put his glasses back on, leaning back to look up at the stars. "I'll show you if you keep it secret."

"From mum?"

"Yes, from mum."

"You already said you did it by talking. I bet I could tell that to mum and she'd know exactly what it means."

"Nope," Harry said. "I don't think she'd know. And if you don't promise you won't ever know either."

"Harry!"

"It's up to you."

"That's mean!"

"How is that mean?"

"Because you won't _tell."_

"I just said I would. Just promise not to tell mum. It'll be another layer to the game. You know, like I don't tell people I'm Harry, and I don't tell people we're magical. This will be your second secret."

"But I already don't tell people we're magical, too."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Okay, I don't tell people I'm famous, either. Your third secret."

"Fine."

"You promise?"

"_Cross my heart, hope to die…"_

"Don't let mum hear you say that," he said, letting the blanket fall off his shoulders as he stood, offering his sister a hand up. "Come on."

"Where are we going?"

"Just into the grass."

They stepped down off the porch, standing just at the edge of the stone walk that ran around the mansion. Harry squatted down and leaned forward, but paused and glanced at his sister. She was distracting—he'd never done this with someone else around. He turned back to the grass.

"Come here," he said, hoping.

"I'm right here," said Holly impatiently. "Are you going to show me or not?"

He squeezed his eyes shut, and focused on the memory of the snakes from the schoolyard. They had been quite peeved at him, even though he had explained what he was doing and had even brought them a bag full of crickets he had caught, and they hadn't said a word before they went into hibernation. He tried to remember exactly what he had said to them, and repeated it now, and was pleased to feel the words stretching out on his tongue.

"Harry?" Holly said a few moments later. He opened his eyes, but was distracted by a quiet voice.

_Hello again, speaker._

Holly squeaked and jumped back onto the step, but Harry smiled at the sound. "Come here," he told Holly, standing to follow the sound, but she frowned at him, and it occurred that he might still be speaking like a snake. He frowned, and focused on her face. "Can you not understand me? Does it not sound like English?"

"I think I—kind of. Say it again."

He sighed. "Let's find the snake," he said. "It'll be easier."

She took a nervous step towards him, and Harry turned, leading the way around the corner of the mansion. "Snake?" he called out, hoping it sounded right.

_Down here, speaker._

They found the snake curled up by the window of Lily's potions lab, enjoying the steam. Harry wrinkled his nose.

_What is speaker doing out in the dark?_

"We're waiting for our mother to get home," he said. He looked up at Holly, whose face was all scrunched up.

"Something about mum?" she guessed. Harry nodded, and grinned.

_Who is the other big one?_

"That's my stupid sister," he told the snake. She frowned again, but apparently did not understand enough to piece together the insult. "I think maybe she can understand us, a bit."

_Why is your egg-mate so small?_

"She's younger than me."

Holly blinked in surprise. "I'm younger than you?" she echoed, in English.

Harry smiled wider. "Can you say something?" he asked. He wasn't sure if it were in Snake-Speak or English, but she seemed to get the idea, because she tilted her head and chewed on her lip, then shook her head.

"I don't think so."

_Did speaker need something?_

"I just wanted to show my sister speaking," Harry replied. The snake shifted, coiling into itself a bit more. "Aren't you supposed to be hibernating?"

_The long sleep? Soon, soon. The grasshoppers are old and easy to catch, and it is still warm in this rock-place._

Harry frowned. "I don't know if you should be sleeping there. It's where all of mum's—"

Suddenly Holly shrieked. "Harry!" she shouted. "It's the car!"

"Holly, wait!" Harry said. He turned back down to the snake. "Sorry, I think my mother is home."

_Are you going to eat your egg-mate?_

"No, she's my sister, of course I'm not going to eat her," he said, scandalized.

_If you wait too long, it will be too big._

"Ugh," said Harry. "Goodnight. I hope you catch lots of grasshoppers."

He turned and ran after his sister, rounding the corner of the mansion just as the car headlights turned off. It wasn't safe to run through the long grass in the dark, but he did so anyways, hurrying to the gate as Sirius got out of the car and swung Holly up into his arms.

"Hey-a Holly!" the man said. Even in the near dark Harry could see his godfather grin before he crashed into the man's legs. "Woah, Harry!" The hand that wasn't holding up Holly messed up his hair. Harry was too happy to care. "How's it, you little scoundrel?"

"Hi Siri!" he said, looking up when the hand came off his head and his godfather started tickling Holly's side. He wisely took a step back before his sister could start kicking, and looked around for Remus.

He found Lily first, as she shut the door. "Harry," she said sternly. "You were supposed to make sure Holly went to sleep if we weren't back by nine."

Harry frowned. "She said it was unfair, and she's not tired, anyways," he said. "And you know she doesn't listen to me. Where's Rem?"

Lily just sighed and opened the back door, helping Remus out of the car. Even in the dark he looked exhausted, but smiled. "Hi, Harry," he said. Harry hurried around to give his uncle a quick hug, peering curiously up into his worn face.

"Are you sick again, Rem?"

"I think it's mostly passed. Good to see you, Harry. I think you've grown about a head."

Harry giggled—he'd last seen his uncle in August, when they'd stayed overnight in London after their trip to Salem. "Harry," Lily cut him off. "Would you take Remus' bag, please?"

"I can get them, Lily—"

"Don't be silly, Remus. Harry?"

"Yes, mum," he said, taking the shabby briefcase from his uncle. There was probably the whole week's worth of clothing in there, enchanted down to size, and who knows what else. He looked up at Remus again. "Do you have any books for me?"

Remus laughed. "I'm sure there's a story or two, somewhere in there," he said. "But you know what I could use? A cup of tea."

"So late?" Lily asked, but Harry grinned and ran back towards the house. He dropped Remus' bag at the foot of the stairs, then ran back out to collect his book and the mugs, which he dumped unceremoniously on the kitchen island so he could climb up onto the counter to fetch clean mugs and tea. When he got back down, Sirius was already behind him, putting Holly on one of the stools, and Harry wasted no time running back around to give his godfather a proper hug.

This time, it was Harry's turn to be swept off his feet, and he giggled as he swung his arms around Sirius' neck. "I hear you've been getting into trouble, little rascal," Sirius said, though he kept his voice down. Harry tucked his head into his Uncle's neck, hiding his pink face. Sirius laughed. "Good for you!"

"Don't encourage him, Sirius," Lily said as she stepped in. Harry looked up in time to see his sister jump down off her stool and give their other uncle, just behind their mum, a hug, and didn't miss the way Remus seemed to flinch, even as he smiled.

"You're getting big too, aren't you, Hollis? Soon you'll be taller than me!"

"Well, when that happens, she can start missing bedtime. Yes, Hollis. Now."

"But _mum!_" Holly whined, looking up at her. "Presents!"

Lily gave Sirius an exasperated look, as if to say, _this is your fault, you know. _"If you go to bed now, you can have presents in the morning."

"But I want them _now!"_

"Then you can wait until next Sunday, when your uncles are leaving."

Holly squeaked, and turned and ran past Remus towards the stairs. Sirius laughed at the sound of her footsteps pounding up the stairs, and Lily followed her daughter out of the room. Sirius put Harry on the stool Holly had abandoned. "Where's the tea pot, then?" he asked. Harry pointed to the cupboard above the stove. Even standing on the counter he couldn't reach it, so his mum kept it up there so he wouldn't try to boil water without her around. Sirius summoned it with a wave of his wand, and filled it with water from the sink, while Remus picked up his book from the island.

"_Mossflower _again, Harry?"

Harry shrugged. "It's really good," he said. "Do you know if the next one is out yet?"

"Not yet, I checked at the store. I'd give you your _books_, but I think your mum would yell at me."

"Besides, you should be resting," Sirius cut in. "You said you would."

"Tea, Sirius…"

"We'll bring it up to you. Go on. You promised."

Remus sighed, but he set the book back down and gave Harry a smile before turning to lumber out of the kitchen. Harry watched soundlessly as his uncle slowly made his way up the stairs, pausing briefly when Lily's blue socks came into view. Harry turned back around.

"Rem's really sick, isn't he," he said, looking to Sirius for answers.

"He's just tired, kid. It's a long trip over, not to mention all that driving."

"How far did you have to drive?"

"From the nearest train station. Your mum's very thorough about this whole muggle thing."

"Well, everyone in the village knows exactly who comes and goes. It would be weird if you just suddenly appeared."

Sirius's shoulder's fell, and his eyebrows pinched up, like a worried golden retriever. "You sound like her. Merlin, Harry, have you been infected with it?"

"With what?" Lily asked, sweeping into the room. "It the tea ready?"

Sirius waved his wand, muttering something, and the kettle whistled. "Now it is."

"Good," she said, handing over a vial. "Put that in. It will help him sleep."

"Don't you have anymore of the…?"

"He's had too much already," she answered, running her hand through her hair to pull it away from her face. "That's supposed to be a baseline, not as-needed."

"Well, it wasn't enough, and I didn't know what else…"

"That's why you call, Sirius. This time it was—" Lily cut herself off, and looked over at Harry with a sigh. "Harry, love, take Remus his tea, will you? And this."

Harry hopped off his stool, taking the single white pill his mother handed him. "What's that?"

"Vicodin," she said brusquely. That didn't clarify much for Harry, but he wrapped his hand around it and took the mug of tea, hurrying out of the room.

He stopped at the first landing of the stairs, where he knew his feet were out of sight, and leaned back, hoping he could hear.

"It was worse this time, wasn't it," his mother was saying. "And he wasn't going to say anything."

"You know Moony. He's stubborn."

"He's a fool, I can't decide whether it's humility or pride…"

"I don't get it, Lily. He's been so much healthier. Last week he even—well, I mean, it's not like its not normal at this point, but he was the one to…" Harry hurried up the stairs, knowing his mum would notice him sooner or later, the way she always did.

Remus' and Sirius' room was on the third floor. When he reached it, the door was open, but Remus was nowhere in sight. Harry crossed over to the open window, and climbed out onto the roof.

"Careful, Harry," Remus said. "You know Lily worries about you being out here."

"I'll be fine," said Harry, edging up the slats until he had reached the flat bit as the top, where Remus was sitting. "I don't think this is what Siri meant when he said you were supposed to be resting."

"Probably not. Is that for me?"

"Yes," Harry said, handing over the tea and holding out his hand with the pill in it. "And this. Why is mum giving you muggle medicine?"

Remus sighed, and regarded the pill with a exasperated look as he took it. "Sometimes when wizards get sick, their magic gets all messed up," he said. "Your mum thinks it's better if I have muggle medicine, just in case."

"Oh," said Harry. He sat down, leaving some space between him and his uncle. He knew that sometimes Remus did not like to be touched, especially when he was sick, and felt sorry that he'd given him a hug. His mum had said that some people were just like that, and it didn't mean Remus didn't love him, it just meant he was uncomfortable. "Is that why you're really here?" he asked. "So mum can look after you?"

"We're _really _here because we wanted to see you all, Harry," Remus said, in surprise.

"Well, yeah, but… is that the only reason?"

"Yes," Remus said, firmly. "It's just a bit of a night bug, I promise. I'll probably be perfectly fine tomorrow."

"Good," said Harry. He felt a bit selfish saying it, but he was sure Remus did not mind. Remus never minded when Harry was a bit selfish, even if he didn't encourage it the same way Sirius did. "Mum says we're not going to be in London for Christmas."

Remus was quiet for a long time, and Harry began to wonder if he hadn't said the wrong thing. Remus had once told him how lonely it could get at Grimmauld Place, with only Kreacher and the portraits there for company in the day, and his mum had told him his uncle was out of work again. Harry couldn't imagine why: anyone with half a brain could see that Remus was one of the smartest people in the whole world and should want him to work for them, but somehow, his uncle's jobs never seemed to work out.

But then Remus asked, "Did she decide on Chile or Peru?" and took a long sip of his tea, so maybe he just didn't know what to say.

"I hadn't heard about Peru," Harry said. "Just Chile."

"That's probably it, then," Remus said. He sighed and set his mug aside. "Though really, it's so peaceful out here. I can't imagine wanting to leave."

"I can," said Harry.

Remus looked down at him, his eyebrows rising. "Are you unhappy here?"

"I want to go back to England," Harry confessed. "There's no one to talk to here."

"What about your school friends?"

Harry thought about that. Nicolas and Mathis were turning out alright, since they had been spending all their yard time and lunch hours together ever since the Snake Incident. "They're muggles," he said, hoping that such a simple explanation could somehow contain everything that meant.

Remus nodded, as he'd hoped. Remus usually understood these things, even if his mum didn't. "And you'd rather spend time with magical children."

"Yeah," Harry nodded. "I mean, I'd like to go into Hogwarts knowing someone, you know? And maybe have someone who gets the whole Boy-Who-Lived stupidity."

A quiet laugh. Remus reached his arms up above his head, like he were stretching, only his arms were still bent. "I know the feeling."

"You know," said Harry, and he paused, chewing his lip. He did not want to jinx things, as the muggles would say, but then again, he knew he had to tell one of his uncles if he wanted to be sure, and Sirius would probably make a huge fuss. Harry loved Sirius, but Remus was always the one he could talk to. "Mum said she thought it would be better if I were just homeschooled."

"When did she say that?"

"Three weeks ago," Harry said. "I was telling about how her coworker's kids though I was stupid for wanting to go to Hogwarts, not Beauxbaton's, and…"

"She wants to keep you safe, you know, Harry," Remus said gently.

"But it's not fair!" Harry exclaimed. "She got to go to Hogwarts, and you and Siri, and dad!"

"You know, Harry, when I was your age, my parents didn't want me to go to Hogwarts," Remus said.

Harry looked up at him in surprise. "Because you were sick?" He knew his uncle had always been prone to getting sick. His mum called it an auto-immune condition, though Harry wasn't sure how it had anything to do with cars. Maybe that was why there were bags under his eyes; Sirius had said it was a long drive. Remus nodded. "So how did you convince them…?"

"I didn't," said Remus. "The headmaster came, and wouldn't leave us alone until he'd sat my dad down and told him they could make it work."

Harry sighed. "Well, that's not going to happen for me," he said. "Everyone knows how much mum _hates _Dumbledore. If he showed up here, she'd probably just curse him."

"Maybe," Remus admitted. "But don't give up on Hogwarts just yet. She hasn't said anything like that to Sirius and I, and you know how Sirius will react."

Harry smiled. He had seen his mother' and godfather's arguments, and while they were nothing to smile at while they were in action, looking back at the memories of shouting and stomping up and down stairs at Grimmauld Place and tricks like pulling out chairs when the other was about to sit at the dinner table were nearly comical. It almost made Harry believe that Sirius really was his uncle, only on his mum's side, not his dad's, because only he and his sister could compare for petty fights.

"If she does say anything, you'll say I should go to Hogwarts, right, Rem?" he said. "I know Siri will get hotheaded about it, but mum doesn't really listen to him…"

"Harry," Remus said levelly, rolling the pill around his hand. "You know I—I'd have you for a son in a heartbeat, but I'm not your dad, and I'm not your godfather, or even your real uncle."

"But you're _family," _Harry insisted. "And mum listens to you."

Remus swallowed, and had more tea, finally taking the pill. Harry's shoulders fell, and he looked back out towards the dark fields, watching the grass on the other side of the walls sway in the moonlight, like they were looking out on a vast ocean that disappeared into the dark where the hills rose up. It was cold out on the roof, but he didn't mind so much. His mum usually locked the window, so he did not get to sit up there often, as much as he would have liked to read there.

Sirius's head popped out of the window after a few minutes had passed. "Merlin, you're a gloomy pair," he said, scampering up to join them. He plopped down on Harry's other side, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. "What are you guys sitting up here moping about?"

"Tell me about Hogwarts?" Harry asked, in lieu of a better answer.

Sirius grinned. He could always tell Harry about Hogwarts.

18.

Laughter.

Lily blinked, looking down at the teapot in her hands. The water had gone cold—she wasn't even sure it had been hot to begin with—so she rinsed off the last suds and flipped the container upside-down onto the drying rack. Sirius had gone upstairs some time ago, and she'd turned off the lights before she remembered she needed to wash the teapot. She must look a sight, standing in the dark like that, but to who? No one was watching.

She dried her pruning hands off on the dishtowel that hung off the oven door. It was good to see Sirius and Remus again, even if Remus shouldn't have travelled in that state. She had taken a few days off work—that would give her enough time to test Remus for allergies, assuming he was feeling better.

The modified Wolfsbane shouldn't have made the nerve damage he faced worse. The transformation of a werewolf, unlike an animagus, was one that modified the existing body at an alarming rate, whereas an animagus transformation was a more magic-based shift. It was alchemy versus transfiguration, in a basic sense—rearranging what was already there, rather than magically changing it into something completely different. All she had done to the potion was add in a mild sedative, in the hopes that it would smoothen the mental agony of transformation. It should not have caused Remus pain—that was the last thing she wanted.

She sighed and checked her watch. Harry was still awake, meaning he was upstairs with his uncles. She pulled her sweater tight around her and climbed the stairs, pausing briefly to look in on Holly, though the girl had finally stopped sneaking out onto the landing and gone to sleep.

When she reached the top floor, the door open, she froze and stared across the room. The window was open. Laughter and Sirius' storytelling voice drifted through, but for the moment, it was just her and the window. Her and her fears. She swallowed them and stumbled forward, focusing as hard as she could on the people—Sirius and Remus and _Harry _were up there and no matter her dreams this was a waking moment, and they would not fall.

"And that was how Filch confiscated the map," Sirius was saying as she approached the window, between fits of laughter.

"He forgets to mention how priceless McGonagall's face was when she realized we were under the tables," Remus added. "Let me tell you, for the rest of the year no one would touch the pies at dinner. The house-elves probably thought we'd all gone mental."

Lily swallowed as she took the last step, and ran her hand over the wooden frame of the window. Solid, not likely to break, like the roof was solid, not likely to cave in.

"What did Dad say when he realized it was you?"

"Three days without talking," Sirius said. She could hear the grin in his voice. "Especially when he realized we'd lost the map. It was only after the NEWTs that he really forgave us. But then, a few months later, I walk in on the first day of auror training and he's already there telling the others the story."

She took a deep breath. She didn't have to step out on the ledge, even. She would just lean out…

"Harry," she said, looking up and focusing on her son's face. It tore at her heart to see him grin like that. How rarely he looked so much like his father, when it was just her. Even now his face fell as he looked down the slope, and his light posture stiffened as his shoulders rose. "It's time for bed, love."

"Right," he said. He got up into a crouch, disentangling himself from the arm Sirius had wrapped around his shoulder. "'night Siri, Rem."

"Goodnight, Harry."

She held her breath as he took his time going down the slats. For a moment, he seemed to freeze, and then his shoes lost their grip, and he went tumbling down the slope, disappearing off the edge into the dark—

"Mum?"

She blinked, and he was there, trying to get past her into the room. She stepped back, away from the damned window. One dream, that had been all, and it plagued her so intensely.

She followed her son closely down the narrow top set of stairs, watching his grip on the railing, and it wasn't until he had reached the first floor that she really relaxed. But her son paused and looked up at her.

"Mum, you know I really am sorry about Claude, right?" he said.

She blinked. "I think you've made that clear, Harry," she said. He had scrubbed her cauldrons for two weeks straight.

"But I really do want to go back to England," he said. "I know I have to have two more years of muggle school, and Holly's still got four. But I don't want to stay here. I want to go home. You know that, right?"

She frowned. It seemed the need to decide on whether she would send her son to Hogwarts or not was getting closer. She loathed to say no, when he was obviously looking forward to it so dearly, but her son's happiness took back seat to his safety. Hogwarts was simply not safe enough for Harry Potter, not as he was. She sighed.

"I know Harry. But things aren't that simple."

"They could be," he said, looking at her. For a moment she wished she could simply undo the ward on his eyes, to see her own staring back at her, to know that this was her son, no matter what. She could not. The best way to keep her son disguised was to keep him disguised even from himself.

"Goodnight, mum," he said, turning towards the door.

"Goodnight, Harry."

* * *

><p>Happy Monday! I'm afraid this chapter kicked my ass most aggressively, because a lot of new writing had to be done with it. I'm still not sure I'm entirely happy, so it may require a second rewrite at some later point.<p>

On a slightly different note - out of curiosity for any French speakers out there - is there a french version of the idiom "cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye"? My research turned up "croix de bois croix de fer, si je mens je vais en enfer", but I wasn't sure if that was used commonly. Anyhow, it doesn't have any real bearing on the story, as I'm not attempting to include any actual French in my writing. Just a curio.

Thank you, as always, for reading!


	7. The Mezzanine Hour, Pt I

Also titled: The Emotional Roller Coaster Chapter.

* * *

><p>19.<p>

"Harry! Are you going to braid my hair or not?"

Summer had once again fallen on London, sweltering in the way that made the suburbs lament the lack of air conditioning. Tourists flocked to the museums and festered around the Thames in the evening, having come dressed for the grey they'd been told London's weather would consist of. Businesspeople sweated in their suits and fainted in the tube. The news reported first that crime was up, then down, and then was distracted by the latest scandal. It was, by all reasoning, a summer most ordinary.

To the ten-year-old boy sprawled on twin bed in Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, it was not an ordinary summer in the slightest, but then again, he was reading, so maybe it was not so unusual after all. He tore away his eyes from the page, and rolled over lazily, pawing around the covers for his glasses. In the doorway of the loo connected to their shared bedroom, his sister stood, arms crossed across his chest. He sighed. She must have gotten out of the bath twenty minutes ago; he hair was half-dry already. "Fine," he said, lifted the book up over his head so he could get a few more paragraphs in. "Get the brush and everything."

A minute later the bed sagged as his sister plopped down next to him, dropping the brush and vial of hair potion onto his stomach. Harry slowly dog-eared the page and closed the book, sitting up and letting the items tumble into his lap.

"Come _on_," Holly whined. "Mum said she'd take us shopping once we got ready an' all."

"I don't know why you're having me braid your hair," Harry muttered. "Mum's just going to change it anyways."

He nudged her forwards so her feet dangled off the side of the bed, then got up on his knees. The potion vial he uncapped and tapped on his palm, letting the oddly goopy liquid pool. It was the same potion he used on his own hair, only Holly's hair was naturally silky, like their mum's. He'd gotten his dad's hair: a naturally rough, thick bunch that stuck out in every direction without the aid of the potion. On Holly's, the potion merely kept things tidy, and had the bonus effect of absorbing some of the leftover water.

"Blonde hair can look good braided—ow! Harry, you're pulling!"

"I fail to understand how you manage to brush your hair if _that's _pulling," he said, though he slowed down his hands a bit, moving with greater care.

"I fail to understand how you talk like that. Ow!"

"Honestly, do you want me to braid it or not? Stop squirming, Hols."

She sighed, and crossed her arms again, but for once said nothing, kicking her feet back and forth against the bed. Harry sectioned her hair into pieces, the way their mum had shown him when braiding had picked up as a trend at the muggle school, then tossed the brush back down onto the bed and started weaving the pieces together. He liked braiding well enough. It was like putting together a puzzle. And it made his sister giggle with pride when she saw her reflection, even though he liked her hair better long and loose.

"Harry," Holly said, never one to settle for the silence. "What do you think mum's getting you for your birthday?"

"I dunno," he said. "School things, I expect."

"But you still haven't gotten your letter."

"Sirius said they don't send them until late June. It's only the twentieth."

"But what if you don't get one?"

Harry rolled his eyes. He was magical and British; it wasn't _getting_ the letter he needed to worry about. Only his sister would worry about something like that, so he concentrated as hard as he could on his hands and tried to make what was left loose of Holly's hair stand up straight. She shrieked when it did. "_Harry!"_

He laughed and let it back down, but just then their mum stuck her head through the door. She still looked like herself, short red hair and green eyes and freckles, so they weren't in any rush, no matter Holly's impatience. "Is everything alright?" she asked, a cautious smile twitching up the corners of her lips.

"Harry's being mean!"

"He's fixing your hair, Hollis. That's doing a favor, not being mean." She looked at Harry levelly. "Come downstairs for breakfast when you're done, Harry. Hollis, you still didn't put away your mess in the library."

"But mum—"

"No 'buts', I asked you to clean it up, and that's that," she said. Holly slumped as their mother slipped away from the door.

"Would you please sit still?" Harry asked. He didn't really want to pull his sister's hair. She sat up again with a huff.

"There," he said, as he secured the band around the end of her braid a few minutes later. It wrapped neatly around one side of her head to fall over the opposite shoulder when he set it down. "You should really learn how to do that yourself."

"It's too hard."

"What are you going to do when I'm at school?"

"Ask mum, I suppose," she said, but then she stood and faced her brother, who was already reaching for his book again. "Harry," she continued, softer. "I don't want you to go."

He blinked. "That's ridiculous," he said. "I've got to learn magic."

"So? You'll be off at Hogwarts and I'll be stuck in the manor with just Mum."

"What about Martel?" he asked. Holly grabbed at the end of her braid and started twirling it around her finger, as she often did.

"Martel's just a muggle," she said, but then she looked up again, eyes wide. "Not that—that's not bad. It's not. But, it's…"

"It's not magic," he said. He knew the sentiment. "I mean, you only have two more years. Then you can go to Hogwarts yourself."

"Two whole years!" It was a long time, Harry would admit. "How am I supposed to stand just mum for two years?"

Harry laughed. "Yeah, you won't have me to cover for you when you make a—you're just avoiding cleaning up the library, aren't you? I'm not going to help."

She stuck out her tongue and spun around to storm out of the room, and Harry continued to laugh until he heard her opening the heavy door above their room. Their room was on the second floor, so it was stairs either way. He languidly put his book back down and stretched, getting up to take the brush and potion into the bathroom, where he paused to adjust a few stray hairs and check his forehead.

It had only been a few hours since he last rubbed in the potion that stretched out the scar and melded it into the rest of the skin, so it wasn't even looking patchy yet. According to his mum, he could let it go for two whole days without anything being too noticeable, but he was always the first to notice any changes. He'd been smoothening out the skin since he was four, so it had been years since he last saw the scar in full showing. When was it last—the Halloween Gala, all those years ago? He'd seen a photo of himself riding Sirius' shoulders in the paper his mum had left out a few days later, the one that started the papers' ridiculous trend of referring to her as 'The Witch', as though that weren't the word for all female magic users.

Passing through his room again, he grabbed his hoodie off the back of his desk chair, and considered stuffing _The Hobbit_ into the pocket. If they were going to be out shopping, he could be stuck for hours as Holly perused the clothing. On the other hand, if he didn't have a book with him he might be able to convince Lily to stop by a Waterstones, so he left it behind. As much as he like rereading his favorites, Harry could never help his excitement at the thought of a new book.

He thought about this as he slowly moved down the stairs, treading lightly lest they creak. Most of his reading was of muggle authors, not magic ones, because they seemed to have more imaginative stories. He'd read some of the classics, of course, and had read through the Tales of Beedle the Bard with Holly when she was learning how to read, but there was something lacking when magic was already real. With muggles, magic was something strange and exciting, and they always wrote it as such. Sure, Tolkien had gotten a lot of things wrong in his descriptions of elves and magical creatures, but his story also took place in a different world, with its own rules and histories and races and languages. Harry loved that—he love science fiction for the same reason. He loved watching the video recordings of Doctor Who his mum had picked up cheap at some muggle's estate sale, loved renting the movies from the store Remus didn't mind walking with him to. Magical writers, living in a world painfully behind the times in technology, could hardly be expected to dream up such great science fiction.

But beyond the writing, and the telly, of course, Harry was sick of muggles. He was sick of going to school and studying maths and chasing the football around the yard at lunch time, sick of speaking in French and, most of all, sick of pretending to be "James Jeannot". Chief on his list of things to be excited about at Hogwarts—tied only with the whole getting to use magic thing—was finally being able to introduce himself to people as Harry. And of course Holly and his mum and uncles were the most important people to him, but he couldn't help but want some proper friends. Not Nicolas, the boy who'd started following him around like a puppy after he'd talked the snakes into hiding in Claude's desk; not Mathis, his sister's friend Martel's older brother, but actual _friends_, who he could talk to about magic and quidditch and who could actually know his name—and everything that had until now been a stupid secret. He didn't care so much about the whole Harry Potter thing. The Boy Who Lived was more his mum's project, not his. But even that he wouldn't mind being able to talk to someone about. To be able to choose for himself what secrets to keep and share.

Thinking of all this, he launched himself up off the railing to jump the last several steps down to the landing. That, of course, set off old Walpurga's stupid portrait, yelling about how he was a half-mudblood in a house of blood traitors. From behind the sound bubble his mum had charmed, she sounded like a telly running in another room.

They'd mostly just gotten used to ignoring her, because even if there were all these weird Black family things lying around the place (not to mention Kreacher, the onerous house-elf seemingly more intent on making their lives hell than doing anything useful) this was Grimmauld Place, and that meant London. His mum had finally declared the reconstruction of the house in Godric's Hollow complete, and they'd spent two weeks there, but they'd been so far out of London it had been a pain to get anything done. It certainly made Sirius happier to have them back; when they were around playing muggle video games in the library and finding excuses to use the phone, Walpurga's portrait really had something to scream about.

"Set her off again, did you?" Sirius asked, sticking his head out the kitchen doorway. Harry grinned and gave his uncle a hug. Sure, they weren't blood relatives, technically, but his mum said he'd been listed as a registered guardian with the ministry, whatever that meant—and when he'd run out of this place all those years ago, Sirius had ended up living with Harry's dad. James, Sirius, Remus, and even Peter had all considered each other family anyhow. Peter had ended up betraying them, but Sirius and Remus had become the kids' uncles. They were a lot more welcoming than their relatives on Lily's side, who'd they'd only met once, with disastrous results that had proven Holly magical. Sirius and Remus weren't related, but they were family, and family that Harry always felt they didn't get to see enough.

"Guess what," said Sirius, pulling Harry into the kitchen. He pointed at the table, where Remus had set out plates of breakfast for the five of them. Harry's place, which was on the right-hand corner, next to the far end where Sirius sat, had something leaning up against the glass. Harry couldn't help it—he ran forward and snatched up the envelope, whooping when he saw the Hogwarts seal pressed into wax.

But when he flipped it over, his joy dropped out the window. The letter, written in green ink, was addressed to none other than _James Jeannot._

"Sirius!" his mother snapped, appearing from the cellar door and sweeping out to snatch the letter from Harry's hand. "I told you—"

"Why is my letter addressed to James Jeannot?" Harry demanded. His mother looked at him, breaking off her _Don't Interrupt Me, Harry_ look to glance down at the letter in her hand, and shrugged.

"It doesn't matter, anyways, because—"

"Doesn't matter?" Harry said. "Doesn't matter?" his voice, he found, was gaining volume of its own volition, and while he rarely shouted, now even if he had wanted to he couldn't have regained control. "We're not in France anymore, Mum! We're in England, in the magical world, aren't we? Where I'm Harry?"

"Harry, calm down," his mother said, rounding the table away from him. Remus came in from the kitchen behind her, a basket covered with a towel in his hands.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"_I am not going to Hogwarts as James!"_

"Of course you're not, Harry," Sirius soothed, trying to put an arm around Harry's shoulder.

"No, of course not," said Lily, and she pulled her seat out. "I've finally found an acceptable tutor, so you won't be going to Hogwarts. It's not an issue."

The silence that fell between them was like the air had been sucked out all at once. When it came rushing back in, so did all three voices.

"Lily, don't be—"

"_What do you mean—"_

"You're being absolutely ridic—"

"Why are you shouting?" asked Holly, coming in the doorway. She must have run down the stairs, because a few hairs had slipped free of her braid.

"Nothing," said Lily. "Come have breakfast, dear."

Harry stared at her.

And stared.

He could feel a rage pooling in his stomach, bubbling like one of her potions, boiling like it had when Claude broke Holly's toy, two years past. He wanted to scream at her, to yell, but he couldn't find the words, and he didn't want to give her the satisfaction. That was how she worked, after all. She'd say something absurd, and when everyone else got up in arms she saw only their passion and how illogical that must make them, and sat on her personal throne of self-righteousness and raised herself higher to lord over them. So Harry did the worst thing he could think of: he turned and stormed out of Sirius' arms, out of the room, ignoring their calling after him, and he ran through the landing and tore the curtain down from Walpurga's portrait, pulling the muting charm with it, and then stomped up the stairs and into his rooms and slammed the door.

And then he opened it, and ran down one flight again. "_Fuck you!" _he shouted, loud as he could muster, and the house-elf heads Remus hadn't been able to unstick came toppling down, crashing to the floor, and he stomped back up.

20.

Several items in the bedroom were broken by the time Lily came knocking. He had pushed the dresser from beside door to in front of it, so even if she unlocked the door she wouldn't be able to get in, and then he had slammed the doors of his and Holly's closets and the bathroom and didn't feel any better. She came knocking, as he knew she would, and when she found the door barred she spoke through it.

"Harry, you need to come back out here. You're being absolutely ridiculous. Are you a child?"

"_Yes!" _he shouted back at her, and he jumped onto the bed and buried his head into the pillow so her voice was muffled, and the other voice that joined her a few seconds later was muffled too, and he very emphatically didn't care. They went away—he moved the pillow to hear the feet on the stairs, and found that somehow that just made him angrier.

He hated Lily, hated her freakish need for control, hated that she thought she could take this away from him. He was going to Hogwarts; he didn't care what she said. He was going.

He took everything nearby—_The Hobbit,_ the pillow, a plastic alarm clock, the shoes Holly had left on the floor—and flung them at the door. Then, when he noticed his eyes stinging and his vision blurring with tears, he took off his glasses and flung them, too.

It was harder to find things to throw with the world blurry, so he flung himself, back onto the bed, and let out some of the choice expletives living around Sirius and Lily had exposed him too. For good measure, he repeated them in French, too, and then added on the handful of things he knew in German, because it was a good, harsh language to spit out.

Eventually, he registered the door shutting downstairs, and grew quiet, staring up at the ceiling, the curses still echoing around his mind like he'd spat them into a cavern inside himself.

His stomach's growling was the first thing reasonable he noticed. He'd run away from breakfast, and that had been late in coming, and he wasn't quite sure how long had passed since them. But he wasn't going down there now. Instead, he rolled over and opened the drawer of his bedside table, pulling out a bar of chocolate Remus had brought home when he'd visited Honeydukes a few weeks earlier. Remus always said chocolate could make anything better. Harry didn't buy that, but he did know it was enough to cure an empty stomach, and had the added benefit of being disapproved of by Lily. She worked in a hospital, and had her fair share of nutritional quips, which substituting chocolate for meals of substance would have reigned over.

Finishing half the chocolate bar and setting the other side for later, Harry went into the bathroom to wash his hands of the brown smudges. He looked into the mirror, and immediately felt sorry for himself: even blurred he could see his hair was standing up on end and his eyes and nose were the same puffy, bright red. The scar was still hidden, of course, but the mess hair and bright patches on his usually tan face made him angry all over again.

He tried to calm down, he really did, but how could he? Books always said splashing water on your face would help, so he turned the sink on full blast and shoved his head under it. This did little more than shock him with the cold and make him jump back. He scowled and leaned into the mirror. It didn't look any different—maybe a bit redder, and his eyes looked greener around the edges, which for once made him even more angry, so he shoved his head under again. The water dribbled down side of his face and into the corners of his mouth, and made him choke trying to spit it out in reflex, and when he pulled back his head he hit it against the metal faucet, which made water spray every which way and an ice cold dribble run down the back of his neck and into his sweatshirt. When he got up straight again and looked in the mirror, somehow only half of his hair had gotten wet, and the rest stuck up even worse than before.

The mirror, he found moments later, was significantly more solid than muggle movies had told him it would be. He had manage to make an indent, spider web cracks forming out from around his hand, and his knuckles stung and something in his hand crunched, but the mirror itself did not shatter. Instead, the face of _Harry Potter _stared back at him in silent distortion. He hated it.

He _hated _it.

If he weren't _Harry Bloody Potter _none of this would have happened. Lily wouldn't be trying to keep him from Hogwarts, the way she kept him from the rest of the magical world. He wouldn't have his letter addressed to James _Fucking_ Jeannot, it would be to Harry—just Harry. The way he was. Not some bloody story-time hero for little kids, not anyone other than himself. Just Harry.

This time, when he buried his face into his bedcovers, he really did scream.

21.

"You're being ridiculous," someone said.

Harry sat up. The voice hadn't come from outside the door, it had come from here, in this very room. Finally he felt around on his floor until he found his glasses, and crammed them back onto his face. He looked around, trying to find it—and the wizard in the picture frame sighed.

"You?" Harry said, falling back onto the end of his bed. "What are you—you're never here!"

"Well you've been making such a racket I thought that someone had died." The wizard huffed, studying his nails. Harry moved into a more comfortable position, one that didn't put so much pressure on his hand. "And who are you, exactly?"

"Nobody," Harry said bitterly. "No one at all."

The wizard rolled his eyes. "Clearly," he said. "No one with any importance in the world would be making so much of a racket."

Somehow this made Harry feel a little bit better, though he was sure that wasn't the intent.

"Who are you, then?" he asked. The portrait certainly looked like other Black portraits, with his dark hair and dark eyes, but he also had on a strange straw hat that curved around itself, twisted like a single oversized goat horn placed atop his head. "And what are you doing in my bedroom? Where are you normally?"

"Your bedroom?" the wizard asked. He looked down his nose at Harry, painted nostrils flaring. "I, I'll have you know, young Nobody, am Phineas Nigellus Black, and this is my home, and this was my study, before someone came along, had too many children, and had the bright idea to turn it into a bedroom!" He looked around the room, lips forming into tight lines as they made a toad-like expression across his face. "Someone with terrible taste in décor." He looked back at Harry. "Who are you, then? Clearly not a Black, or I would know of it."

"No," said Harry. "But Sirius is my uncle, and I'm living here right now. And I've never seen you here before."

"So just because you haven't seen me, you get to declare my study _your_ room?" the wizard demanded. Harry thought about it, and shrugged. "Ridiculous." The man paused, staring at Harry in a way that made him quite uncomfortable, until finally—"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Well, aren't you going to explain yourself? I could hear you all the way from my other portrait. Why were you making such an appalling cacophony?"

Harry's head sank into his shoulders a bit. "My Hogwarts letter came."

"And this is a _bad _thing? You seem the sort of boy for tasteless celebrations. _Cake_."

"My mum doesn't want me to go."

"Why? You aren't a squib, or some sort of half-breed, are you? Merlin knows they'll acceptanyone, these days…"

"No," said Harry. "But she thinks it's too dangerous."

"Too dangerous?" the man scoffed. "Dangerous indeed. You might end up having ideas, and _thinking._ Whatever will she do when you start saying no to your own dear mother?" He paused. "And what is she going to do, then? Train you up herself? I can give you half a dozen instance where that went terribly wrong, and that's just off the top of my head. Take Elizabeth McCleary—her parents _tried _to teach her themselves. When I finally talked them into sending her up to Hogwarts, for their own safety, she had to go back two years, to unlearn everything they had taught her. And ten years later, where did she end up but St. Mungos, as the first long-term patient in the new wing!"

"Did you teach at Hogwarts?"

"Teach?" The man barked a laugh, a terribly unpleasant sound. "Teach? I was the Headmaster, young _Nobody_, for twenty years!"

"So you taught first, right?"

The man's eyes thinned with his glare. "Of course I did," he snapped. "History of Magic. The last Professor before Cuthbert took over, and Merlin knows when that will end." He scratched his nose, making the strange hat bob dangerously. "Could never stand it, of course. You _children_ have no respect for your elders."

"Why should we," Harry asked, thinking of Lily, "When you have no respect for us?"

The man's scowl deepened, carving a deep furrow between his brows. "Well," he said. "If this is what I get for going out of my way to be nice, I can't see why anyone would ever do so. I was _going_ to offer to give your mother a good talking to, but if you're going to be unpleasant, I don't see why I should." He turned and started to walk out of the painting, voice trailing after him. "Hogwarts doesn't need any more smart-mouthed spoiled brats; there are plenty of those already."

"Wait!" Harry cried, but the man was already gone. When it was clear he was not going to come back, Harry fell back onto his bed. Of course he had managed to drive away this last link to Hogwarts. He was doomed. Lily would never be persuaded, and he would be stuck living his life as a French muggle and grow up to be a farmer and have a herd of mundane children and—

"Well," Black said—and Harry sat straight up to see the man back in his frame—"Everyone else wanted to know where I had gone, and so the current headmaster heard and told me to tell you that he wouldn't be terribly troubled if you wanted him to make a house call, to convince your mother that you most certainly should be at Hogwarts, if you got a letter."

"The current headmaster?" Harry repeated. He wasn't sure what Black meant by 'everyone else', but he was glad now he hadn't given away his name. Lily would be furious. Then again…

"Albus Dumbledore," Black said, nose wrinkling up in disdain.

Dumbledore. Well, that explained a lot.

"I don't think that would—" Harry paused. He still wasn't sure how much he should give away, especially when as far as Lily was concerned Dumbledore was almost as bad as Voldemort. That was saying something, and Harry wasn't sure it could be true if the man was headmaster at _Hogwarts_, but it wouldn't do to go rushing into things without holding his cards close. "Tell him my Uncle Sirius and all his friends think that he is an absolute—" he paused, considering, and decided to use Sirius' term "—bloody wanker, and so that would hardly do any good."

Black looked delighted. He even tipped his hat at Harry. "Will do—will do indeed!" he said, and scampered out of his frame. Harry fell back on the bed again, though this time he made sure to keep a good eye on the empty portrait. "Wanker," he whispered, trying out the word on his tongue. He had probably shouted it earlier with the other curses, but now he wasn't sure if he liked it—he knew some good French insults, picked up in the schoolyard, but English he had only ever really spoken with his mum, Holly, Sirius, and Remus, so he wasn't as good with slang. "Wanker," he said again. "Wanker, wanker, wanker—"

"You made several of the more prudish headmasters blush," Black said, returning with something that looked like a bob in his step. "Do you have any more of those insults, young man? It is always good fun to deliver insults unto Dumbledore."

"Sure," said Harry. "Mum calls him a Right Bastard, and Sirius—wait, is that all you came back for?"

"Well, the _right bastard _said to apologize for him, as he agreed that it would do little good if Sirius Black were among your mother's friends. Sirius—" Black's face contorted a bit. "Which one is that, again? Named after my brother, no doubt, so he must be the grandson—no, great-grandson, of…"

"You can tell him he's a right bastard, and all that," Harry said helpfully. He had spent a lot of time staring at the family tree that filled the walls of one of the rooms on the first floor. It was twisted and convoluted in ways Harry didn't fully understand, and had quickly learned not to think to much on, as when you went further back there were siblings marrying and having kids, not just cousins, and that was bad enough. He'd tried to imagine marrying Holly, and while he loved her… marriage? Ew.

"Oh, I will," said Black. He turned to leave, but then paused and looked back. "You know, you can direct your mother to my portrait…"

"I doubt it would help very much," Harry said glumly. His mind had wandered a bit on the whole Black thing, and… "Besides, she's a muggleborn."

"Well," said Black, and they looked at each other for a moment, then the man walked away.

Harry fell back once again. Somehow the conversation with a long-dead wizard had calmed him down more than anything else. His hand still hurt, and he was still angry, but it was more like smoking embers than a full on fire, now. But he still had absolutely no intention to move the dresser away from the door, and besides, he was tired. An hour or two had passed since he had shut himself away, maybe three, but the anger had taken so much out of him he just wanted to sleep. And he couldn't see why not. So he took off his glasses—and out of spite, threw them off across the room again, making a thump as they hit one of the wardrobes—and fell back into the covers, and into sleep.

0.

_He dreamed._

_It was Halloween again, and his mum was leading him up the narrow stairs at the top of the manor, only it wasn't to his Uncles' room but to her study, where the pensieve sat on the table. "But I don't want to look," he said, but the hand she had gripped on his arm turned into a snake, which wound around and around his arm and hissed at him. It took him a moment to understand that was what it was doing, because he couldn't understand the snake, and he could always understand snakes, as easily as he could understand French. The snake wound so far up his arm it reached his back, and it curved up out of sight. He tried to turn and look at it, because it had grown bigger and bigger, but something pushed on the back of his head so he leaned closer to the pensieve. And when he looked again it was full of bright green garden snakes, all hissing at him as he got closer and closer—_

"Harry_?"_

—_and then he hit the water of the pensieve and fell through, in the memory. The nursery at the house at Godric's Hollow. "James!" someone shrieked—it wasn't his mother, because his mother had come through the door in the black dress and cloak she had worn to the Halloween Gala, and everything was grey except for the red of her hair. _

"Harry_?"_

_She raised a hand and the sight of it made his stomach churn: her skin had rotted away, leaving exposed bone and sinewy muscle. She pointed back out down the stairs, and he could see down them, to where his father's body lay in the hallway._

"_You did this," she said, her voice like rustling paper, the language of the Snakes that had eluded him before._

"_No," he said. "I didn't—"_

"_I just wanted to keep you safe," she said. "Now look what has happened!"_

_And he looked again and realized that the body at the bottom of the stairs was not his father, but his sister. "No!" he shouted, and ran down the stairs. He shook Holly's shoulders, and her eyes opened—only they were no longer grey, but red. Suddenly she was standing over him, in his mother's dress and she raised her wand—a green light—he raised his hand to stop it—pain—_

"_Harry?" a voice was calling—_

23.

"Harry?"

Harry blinked and look around. He was sitting up in bed, panting, his hand stretched out in front him, and he had no clue why. It had swollen, and the knuckle blossomed a nasty bruise, and he cradled it close to his chest he could see there were bright scratch marks around the knuckle, where it must have been bleeding before.

There was a light knocking at the door. "Harry, you are in there, right?"

It was Sirius. Harry sighed, rubbing sleep from his eyes with his other hand. "What is it?" he called back, just loud enough to be heard.

"We've had a talk with your mum. Can I come in?"

Harry slowly got up off the bed and walked to the door, which still had the dresser blocking it. He pulled it about half a meter before it got caught on the rug and wouldn't budge. Harry wasn't exactly a large ten-year-old. He wasn't even sure how he had gotten it there so easily in the first place: it had been sitting on the rug, which had long strands that made everything difficult to move, and it would have had to have been pushed at least five meters before it hit the hardwood that was only a fraction easier to move across.

"It's stuck," he said.

Sirius opened the door as far as he could, poking his head in. "Nice blockade," he said, and tried to push it from the other side. It barely budged before he, too, gave up. "Well," he said. "Lets see…"

Harry blinked as Sirius used the sturdy dresser and the door frame to lift himself up over it. The movement clearly took a good deal of arm strength, and Sirius winked at him as he settled down on the top of the dresser. "Not quite an old fogey yet," he said and leaned forward to grab Harry and help him up beside him. "What did you do to your hand?"

Harry reached back and pushed the door closed. "Punched the mirror."

"Ouch," said Sirius. "There's unbreakable charms on the lot of them. One of my aunts was a superstitious old bitch."

"Unbreakable charms?" Harry repeated. "Not on mine. I—I maybe broke it a bit."

Sirius stared at him, then laughed. "Well, you knocked down the stuck house-elf heads, too. Maybe next time you're angry I'll turn you loose on the bitch's old portrait, stuck in the hall."

Harry flattened his hair down to occupy his good hand while he scowled. "I think I like her down there. She's a good way to annoy mum."

"There's a difference between an annoyance and forcing abuse onto someone, kid," Sirius warned.

"So what would you call what mum's trying to pull, then?"

"Protection," Sirius said simply. Harry looked at him, just close enough that even without his glasses he could see his uncle's calm face. They looked at each other for a moment, then Sirius' face fell, and he sighed, running his hand through his hair, ruffling his bangs back from his ears and into the rest of his brown curls. "I know it doesn't seem it, but she's trying, kid. It would kill her if something were to happen to you or your sister. She's just trying to keep you safe."

"You're the one who said she was being ridiculous, earlier. You said it to her face."

"Well, she's certainly blowing things out of proportion," said Sirius. "At least, far as I can see. But you have to remember, your mum is always going to see the world differently from the rest of us." He paused. "But I talked to her."

"And?"

"And she'll let you go."

* * *

><p>Oh dear. Well, I can't say this chapter wasn't fun to re-visit, but... really, there's only so much emotional intensity you can right before it starts sounding really/ crack-y. I cut off here because I realized if I didn't the chapter would be about 12,000 words, which I did not have time to get through, and it makes things a lot easier on me, because I'm currently hitting my late midterms and heading into the finals rush. Since I'm about halfway through the next bit, that next week's will definitely be on time, but I may or may not have to put off the chapter after that, and then we're getting into the dangerous territory of new writing, which takes a lot longer. But hey, at least two more chapters in relatively reasonable time, right?

Thank you all for reading, and for the lovely comments. You're all wonderful dears. The next chapter is relatively calmer. Ish. Kinda. No promises.


	8. The Mezzanine Hour Pt II

23.

Harry's breath caught in his throat, and he stared. His uncle's face was the most sincere Harry had ever seen it. Sirius wasn't ONE for slowing down and sorting through emotions; that was more Remus' area. But here he was, drawn back in thought.

Harry swallowed. _He could go to Hogwarts. _He would fight with his mum later, he knew it, but for now he was too relieved to care. "How'd you—what?"

"We talked to her," Sirius repeated. He jumped down off the dresser. "It'll be a lot of hard work for you in the mean time, and you'll have to go as 'James', but—stay put for a sec," he said, and pushed the whole thing, boy and all, back against the door.

"What did you say to her?"

Getting back up, Sirius leaned back against the door. "That's better."

"Siri, I mean it. Mum never takes anything back. Ever."

"Now you're being silly," said Sirius. "Of course she does. And she's not used to being wrong, but she'll admit it when she is. Lily just doesn't like hurting people, Harry; that's why she's a healer. She likes helping people deal with pain and getting past it. Anyone with half a heart could see she'd stepped over a line with you."

"Wouldn't you be angry, if your mum had said you couldn't go?"

"Oh, I would have been livid. But my mum wouldn't have had any good intentions keeping me back, would she? Your mum is honestly trying to protect you. And Harry—it's not your fault at all, but it's very difficult to keep you safe."

"I think it's ridiculous," Harry muttered. "Honestly, don't people really think that Harry Potter—that I'm some sort of miracle? They don't want to hurt me, just make me into some sort of weird hero thing."

"You haven't seen the half of it, kid. Idolizing someone can be just as harmful as demonizing them, and since people are idiots, there's not really much difference."

"Still," said Harry. "I—I really don't think most people care. Mum's just so excessively focused on how terrible the world is. I just want to go to Hogwarts and have friends and learn magic, and mum would rather build Azkaban two-point-O to lock me up inside."

Sirius flinched, but put his arm around Harry's shoulder. He wondered if he shouldn't have used Azkaban in his metaphor, no matter how many times he had thought it. The prison was, after all, the one thing Sirius wouldn't talk with him about.

"When his parents died," said Sirius softly, "James changed. It wasn't a bad thing—maybe you could say he finally grew up a little." He stared off into space for a moment, then laughed, though nothing he had said had been funny. "Well, maybe it was about time. James had always been the most outgoing, confident Gryff there ever was. But after his parents died, he got… quiet."

"Quiet?" Harry echoed. The idea hardly fit in the picture he'd been painted of his father by the stories; practical joker and repeat offender for the title of idiot, cocky brat who didn't know when to hold back a little, intensely caring and fiercely protective all the same.

"I think he finally understood what it meant to lose someone. His parents had been pretty old when he was born, and they'd been his only family growing up. I know you might not see it this way, but for most kids, parents are… immortal. Unshakable. Like them or not, they're the picture of strength and adulthood."

"Even yours?"

"To some extent," Sirius said. "But for me, your Dad's parents were the only ones I really looked up to. Maybe all four of us grew up a little when they died, I dunno. But James changed the most."

Harry's hand stung. He had almost forgotten about it. He must have made some sort of sound, because Sirius pulled out of his musings and gave him a glance, which turned into a rueful smile. Harry swallowed, and forced himself not to move to look at his injury, letting Sirius think Harry was following his train of thought. He'd seen this quieter side of Sirius before, of course, but he was used to the man who had spitefully put dirty muggle magazine cut-outs all over his walls as a kid, who chased Harry and Holly around the house and caught them by jumping over banisters to get ahead on the stairs, who shouted at the telly when he lost to them in video games.

"When we lose people close to us like that, we change," he said now, his voice soft. "I changed, when your dad died. I don't think there been a day that something hasn't happened to make me miss him. Remus changed. And your mother…"

"What was she like, before?"

"Smiled a lot more. And always believed the best of everyone. Innocent until proven guilty, and then forgiven by a tear."

Harry thought about their conversations about Dumbledore. It had been almost ten years since his dad died, and not for a moment had she relented in her anger. He didn't understand what he could have done that was so bad, because You-Know-Who had been the one to kill James Potter and Dumbledore had been trying to stop him, but he didn't think Lily would ever forgive the wizard. And he thought about the way she always told off Remus when he lost another job after having insisted that everything was going well. No matter how many times he said the new boss was different and would understand his susceptibility to illness was out of his control, he would eventually come back without a job and get into a shouting match with Sirius and Lily over having said nothing. "Mum hates people like that."

"I don't think she hates them. I don't think she hates anyone, really, kid. But… she thinks she was naïve, before, and worries about people like that. Worries they'll lose as much as she did."

"That's stupid," Harry said. He thumped his good hand on the dresser's edge. "It's better to believe the best of people, right? It's what always happens in the books. Someone you think can't be trusted at first is really the hero all along. Like Strider."

"Strider?" Sirius echoed.

Harry had forgotten, in the wake of his uncle's mature moment, that Sirius didn't read his muggle novels the way Remus did. "Aragorn. Everyone is skeptical of him, but it turns out he's the last in the line of the kings of Gondor."

Sirius laughed, and reached up to ruffle Harry's hair. It wasn't wet anymore, the boy realized—how long had he been asleep?

"Right. Maybe Remus should be talking to you," Sirius said, and paused. "It's not always that way, though, Harry. You can't just go around trusting everyone. Your mum just wants to keep you safe, and that's harder with you than most."

"I thought it would be harder for Holly. That's why we have to keep her a secret, right?"

"It could be, 'specially now that its been so long. But she's a pretty well-kept secret, isn't she? So it's easier to protect her, because no one would go out of the way to try and hurt her."

"But they'd try to hurt Harry Potter."

Sirius sighed. "I know, kid. It sucks. Some people are ridiculous."

"So is it safe for me?" Harry asked. "At Hogwarts. I mean, I want to go. More than anything in the world, I want to go. But is it safe?"

Sirius thought for a bit longer than Harry had expected. "Well, Hogwarts is the safest place in the world."

"That's convincing."

Sirius messed his hair more, which would have annoyed him if it weren't such a mess already. "Don't be a brat, kid," he said, in a tone that suggested Harry should strive to be even more bratty whenever he got the chance. "It really is the safest place, unless you want to be locked up in a vault in Gringotts. Nothing from the outside world can get in, if its not wanted."

"What about things that are already there?" Harry asked, thinking, again, of Dumbledore.

"Well," said Sirius, thinking of something else. "Those things are everywhere."

The man sighed and climbed down off the dresser again. "Come on," he told Harry. "Will you help me move this hunk of junk? You can come back in here and hide again if you'd like, but we should at least wrap up that hand of yours, or something. And maybe some dinner?"

Harry felt his stomach churn and got down. He wasn't entirely satisfied with breaking off his protest so simply, but he'd only had half a chocolate bar. He was hungry. "What time is it?" he asked.

"Half past seven. Your mum and Holly brought Chinese food back when they went shopping."

"Half past _seven_?" That seemed wrong—it had been ten, maybe ten thirty at the latest when he'd gone downstairs, and then—_how long had he been asleep?_

"Yeah. Are you going to make me do all the work, kid?"

Harry helped Sirius shift the dresser up to the rug, then slipped his much smaller body between it and the wall and tried to help push. It wouldn't budge. They moved, trying to get both Harry and Sirius pushing, then pulling—but Sirius quickly gave up, pulled his wand out, and levitated the dresser back into place. "Honestly, are you keeping bricks in there?"

"There's books in the bottom drawer," Harry admitted. Lily had tried to make him keep the books stored in the library, where she said they could be kept orderly, but Harry enjoyed reading into the late hours of the night, and, being a child frequently woken by bad dreams, liked to have options on hand to distract himself with.

"Ugh," said Sirius. "You and Remus are both mental. Books?"

They made their way up the stairs, passing by the library on the mezzanine where Holly was sprawled on the floor playing Nintendo, and up another level to Sirius' and Remus' room. It had been Sirius' parents, he had told Harry, but Remus downright rejected staying in the room that teenage Sirius had plastered with scantily-clad muggles. So they had completely gutted thesuite, and Sirius had dug into the Black vaults in order to replace the outer wall with floor-to-ceiling magical windows looking out on a forest somewhere, like they'd done with the kitchen ceiling.

Remus was reclining on the bed—reading, of course—when they came through the door. "Oh," he said, dropping the book to his lap. "Hello, Harry. Feeling better? You told him, right, Sirius?"

"Of course I told him," said Sirius. "But he'd already broken an unbreakable mirror, and moved an impossibly heavy dresser without magic."

"Really?" Remus said. "How did you break the mirror, Harry? We tried to get the irritable one out of the loo up here when Sirius was fixing it up, but had to settle for a silencing charm…"

"I punched it," said Harry.

Remus blinked at him, but, in a most un-Remus-like response, cracked a smile. "You know, your dad broke his hand on one of the mirrors in our dorm by punching it. Even when we all tried _reparo,_ there was still a long crack going through. I wonder if the urge runs in the family."

"Well, let's hope Harry didn't break his hand," said Sirius. "Do we still have those bandages in there?"

Remus sat up. "You're hurt."

Harry held up his swollen, multicolored hand sheepishly. "I mean, it could be worse. I thought the glass would shatter, and that—that would've probably been bad."

"Decisively so," Remus agreed, swinging his legs off the bed to hurry into the bathroom.

Sirius conjured up a few extra armchairs by the window wall, and waved Harry off towards them before following Remus. Harry sighed and sat down. He should have known Remus would be alarmed—his hand looked a lot worse than it felt.

"Sirius, have you—"

Harry looked over his shoulder and saw Lily in the doorway. She stared back, mouth frozen open before she forced it shut in what he imagined was supposed to be a friendly smile. "Harry, love. Feeling better?"

Harry's uncles came out of the bathroom, looked at each other, and split, Remus carrying the roll of bandages towards Harry while Sirius faced Lily. "Did you need something?" Sirius said, his voice sounding strangely cold.

"Oh, nothing important," said Lily, stepping into the room and towards Harry. "Is someone hurt?"

"Harry just bruised his hand a bit," said Sirius. "Nothing important. Can you tell Hols the room's open?"

"Harry?" said Lily, ignoring Sirius and stepping closer. Harry felt his shoulders stiffen and lift towards his ears, and that dark feeling that had burned in his stomach that morning was rising up into his throat. "Let me—"

"_Don't touch me."_

The words left Harry before he could even realize what he was saying, and Lily stepped back, mouth and eyes wide. The hand she had reached out towards him pulled back to her chest, and for once his mother looked very small. Harry blinked, but he wasn't going to stand down. The thought of his mum healing his hand like nothing had happened between them made him feel sick.

"I'll go get Hollis off the games," she said after a long moment, her voice a shell of what it had been before, and she turned to flee the room.

"Can I have your hand?" Remus asked, when her footsteps had disappeared down the stairs. Harry felt like a punctured balloon deflating. Remus handled his hand gingerly, making Harry really look at it. The bruise had spread out from his knuckles and swelling fingers towards his wrist. "You're lucky your fingers aren't too damaged, though…"

Pain flared, making Harry's vision blur white. He must have yelped, because Sirius was at his shoulder in a heartbeat. "Are you alright?"

"His index finger must be jammed," said Remus. "Hopefully nothing worse."

"Well, stop poking it! You'll make worse!"

"Sirius, I barely brushed it. Hand me the cream?"

Sirius passed Remus a vial Harry hadn't realized he had been carrying, which was filled with a thick green gel that looked like viscous jade. Remus uncorked it and tilted the vial over Harry's hand, so it slipped out onto his finger.

When the gel hit his skin, it was as though his hand had been turned into a sandwich baggy filled with cool water. The pain that had been burning was doused, and the swelling seemed to be no more than extra air. In the sudden clarity Harry realized the extent of the pain he had been ignoring. He blinked, watching some of the bruising retreat as Remus' gentle hands spread the gel around.

"Okay," he said faintly. "Maybe it was worse than I thought."

"Naw," said Sirius, his voice strained high. "It's not too bad. You should see when quiddich players get hit full-on by bludgers. There's an injury to wince at."

"He's just trying to avoid reality," said Remus. "Which is that he should have brought this up here the moment he realized you were hurt."

"Um, aren't I the one to blame for that?" Harry pointed out. "I mean, I was the one who hurt it, and that was ages ago, and it's my hand, anyways…"

"No, Harry," said Remus. He picked up the bandage and started wrapping it around Harry's hand, forming a beige mitten.

"You're not to blame at all. I don't think it was your goal to hurt yourself, and either way, you're not to blame for being injured. But we're supposed to be taking care of you, kid," Sirius agreed as Remus wrapped. He ruffled Harry's hair. "How 'bout I grab you something to eat? Chow mein sound good? Or something else?"

"Chow mein is fine," said Harry. Anything to get Sirius' hand away from his hair. "And maybe an apple?"

"Sure thing."

Remus tucked the end of the bandage in, and Harry took back his hand. The gel's soothing effect was starting to wear off already, but the bandaged was one of Lily's, so the pain only came back as a dull ache. "Harry," Remus said softly. "Are you alright? Really? You're not one to get angry like that."

Harry set his hand in his lap, turning to look out the window. Between the dark trees, he could just make out a deer walking in the distance. "I'm just sick of it," he mumbled. "Her trying to control everything. I—I just want to be me. Not have to carry around my whole life like a secret."

"I know what you mean," said Remus, just as softly. "And Harry—I want to warn you, because you're a mature boy, and I don't think it would help at all to say otherwise: it's not going to get easier. Anywhere you go as Harry Potter, you're going to have to tuck yourself away and put on the Boy Who Lived face. Anywhere you go as James, you're going to see the differences between who you are and who you're pretending to be, clearer than ever."

"How am I supposed to live like that?" Harry demanded. "How is anyone?"

"You learn to bear it," said Remus. "The alternative is worse." He paused, and laughed softly. "Of course, you end up finding people you can really trust and care about. And they make all the difference."

Harry tilted his head. He had thought—vaguely, in the sort of 'fill-in-the-gap' type way he was prone to doing when the adults were not saying things—that Remus was referring to his and Sirius' relationship. According to Lily, for the most their sort of relationship was frowned upon by magical society; though it was completely ridiculous for anyone to be cruel to someone for being in love, of course, it was something that happened and Sirius and Remus had to keep their relationship mostly undefined for the sake of Sirius' job and both their safety. But that didn't seem to be what Remus was referring to. "You mean Sirius, right?" he asked.

"Sirius, and your dad, and your mum, of course," Remus said. "Oh, but what am I talking about? Come on, Harry, we had better make sure Sirius hasn't broken the microwave again."

"He just ran away because he was flustered," Harry pointed out. "He's probably not even gotten the food out of the fridge."

"Probably not," Remus agreed. They headed down the stairs. Harry tensed a bit in front of the library door, but neither his sister nor Lily were there. "You know," Remus continued, "When you were a baby, Sirius was absolutely useless. Any time anything went slightly wrong, he and your dad would panic, leaving Lily and I to clean up the mess or burp you or get you to stop crying."

Harry rolled his eyes, though he could feel his cheeks pink at the thought of himself as a baby. "He was that way with Holly, too. Remember when she fell off my broom?"

Remus laughed. Sirius had given Harry a broom that would hover a few feet off the ground, and when Holly was two she'd tried to use it. Holly didn't have the natural sense of balance that Harry did, though, and even though the broom was designed for safety she had still managed to fall off. "He just about screamed as loud as she did," said Remus.

"Who did?" asked Sirius, as they came into the kitchen. He was holding a plate of chow mein, which appeared to be cold, and an apple already sat at Harry's place at the table.

"You," said Remus, walking over as Sirius set down the plate to kiss his cheek. "We were remembering when Holly fell of the broom."

"Harry," said Sirius, a bit too quickly. "Here's your chow mein, and the apple. I couldn't get the stupid my-crow-wave to work, so—" He pulled his wand out an waved it vaguely, sending a bolt of red light at the plate. The noodles, absorbing the light, started to smoke, though they didn't appear to be on fire. "Well," said Sirius dubiously, poking one of them. "They're probably fine."

Harry shrugged and sat down. Remus went into the cooking area and came back with a can of coke, three wine glasses, and a bottle of red.

"Why did dad punch the mirror?" Harry asked after Remus poured their drinks. He liked the way Remus always put his coke or juice in a wine glass. Sometimes he did it for Holly, too, but not nearly as often as he did for Harry.

"What?" Sirius asked.

"Rem said dad broke his hand punching a mirror. Why?"

Remus picked up his glass and swirled the wine around in it. The bottle was something muggle, from the logo, which was clearly a digital production, so he had probably brought it home from work. Remus always preferred to provide things himself, Harry had noticed. It seemed rather odd, that they lived in this big house and Lily and Sirius clearly had the money to help Remus out, yet he always refused if they tried to buy things for him outside of his birthday or Christmas.

"It was fifth year," he said. "So it was probably something with your mum. I don't really remember."

"No," said Sirius, "It was after she fought with Snivellus."

"What?" Remus frowned, tilting his head to one side. "I think I would remember, if it were that."

"A few days after," Sirius insisted. "When he tried to ask her out again. He'd been on top of the world, since then, remember?"

"Oh, you mean when he had assumed—and she called him a right git."

"Mum called dad a git?" It was strange; mostly when they talked about his parents' relationship it was after they'd left Hogwarts, when they were married and a pair of inseparable lovebirds. But when they talked about their time in school, it was hard to imagine they'd end up that way, from how his dad was always trying and failing to impress Lily. It was like a terrible romantic comedy, where everything his dad did seemed to make him fall flat on his face.

"Too many times," Lily said from the cellar door. "But he deserved it. He was such a brat at that age."

24.

Harry picked up his fork and poked the chow mein. It didn't look so bad, and it had stopped smoking, so that was good. Lily took the seat next to Remus on the other side of the table, and topped off the men's wine before taking a swig straight from the bottle. "And you're still not allowed to call him Snivellus, Sirius. He has a proper name."

"Come on, Lily," Sirius whined. "He's even an worse git than we'd ever thought, he said it himself. Remus, back me up."

"I'm with Lily. Name-calling is just as immature now as it used to be. And there's no need to stoop to being a git yourself, love."

"Don't call me love, you traitor."

"Who's Snivellus?" Harry asked.

"Severus Snape," his mum answered. "A friend of mine, when we were younger. The first person with magic I met. He teaches potions at Hogwarts."

Sirius snorted. "Teaches is a very generous term, as I've heard it."

"Fine. He glares disapprovingly while everyone else fails to follow unspecified instructions." She took another swig of wine. "Either way, he was my friend, and James failed to understand how I could associate with Severus over him. But James was a spoiled brat, up until he was what, sixteen? Seventeen?"

"After you moved in with him, Sirius," Remus said. "I think that's when he started to get his head on straight."

"We probably all did, around then," said Sirius. Remus patted his hand, and Harry saw it stay there, resting on top of his other uncle's.

"Sirius, your head will never be straight, love."

"Then neither will yours."

Lily cleared her throat, took another drink, and set down the bottle. She crossed her arms and leaned forward on the table, looking directly at her son. "So, Harry," she said. "Sirius told you that I'm willing to let you go to Hogwarts."

"Yes," Harry said. He knew what was coming was the If. There always was an If, when she was trying to play herself as giving someone what they wanted.

"If," she said, "You can prove to me you'll be able to keep that you're Harry Potter a secret."

"So what am I supposed to be, then?" Harry asked. "The whole 'James' thing works in France, sure, but who exactly is going to look at me, hear the name James, and not think of dad?"

"Well," she said. "If it's too difficult, you don't have to."

Harry glared at her and dug into his noodles. They tasted slightly smoky, but otherwise were basic overly-greasy takeout Chinese.

"So," she continued on. "You'll go as _Jamie_ Jeannot at school. And you're going to be Sirius' nephew-his actual, if illegitimate, nephew."

Jamie. Like that was so different from James.

"You want to pretend like Regulus had a kid?" Sirius said. "No offense, Lily, but he died when he was eighteen."

"Which would put him at having just enough time, in his post-graduation trip to France ,to make a bad decision with a local girl and end up with an illegitimate son."

"It could work," said Remus thoughtfully. "After all, since you're Harry's secondary guardian, Sirius, any genealogy charm would put him as attached to the Black family, but not as part of the main line. That's about as detailed as I know of."

"What about Holly?" Harry asked. "She'll go to Hogwarts too, right?"

"Of course," said Lily. It made Harry slightly angry that she answered without hesitation, as though there'd never been any question about the matter, but Holly wouldn't have to fight to get to Hogwarts the way he did. That was definitely a good thing. "She'll be your half-sister, though. This will take a bit of work with a mixed polyjuice, and maybe we'll change your nose, because we'll need to make it seem you got your looks from me, but as long as you keep the scar disguised and don't start messing up your hair, there shouldn't be a problem."

"Like that'd ever happen," Harry muttered. He'd seen the pictures of his dad in school. Apparently he had thought that having a bird-nest atop his head was somehow cool. Though Harry's hair was naturally as wiry as his dad's had been, he found it's natural look absolutely ridiculous, especially when it was the matter of a potion his mum could easily brew for him to change the texture. This was especially useful when considering that several magazines over the years had tried to use photos of James as stand-ins for photos of Harry, which simply did not exist, so everyone expected him to look even more like his dad than he did—identical, even. It was how they got away with traveling so much.

"Well, it's not going to be like going to school in France, Harry," Lily said. "You'll be living at Hogwarts. That means you won't be coming home in the evenings or flooing here to Grimmauld Place on weekends. Every hour of every day, you will have to be living as Jamie. No one can ever know otherwise."

"But why not?" Harry asked. "Why can't I just go as Harry?"

She opened her mouth, but got caught up in staring at him and then had to take a swig of the wine. She set the bottle back aside and folded her hands. "Because it isn't safe," she said simply. "Albus Dumbledore is a shrewd chess master. He knows You-Know-Who will be back, and he'd leap at the chance to sink his claws in to you, I guarantee it. You won't even know you've been used until he's sent you to your grave. If you go, you're going to have to do everything you can to keep away from that man, Harry. He can never know who you are."

"I'm going," Harry said firmly. "I don't care if I have to take polyjuice every morning. I'm going."

"Then you're going as Jamie."

"Shouldn't he use a different name?" Sirius asked. "Like he said, it's so close to 'James'…"

Remus shook his head. "Harry's used to being James. It's much easier to pass when you respond to a name automatically, and no matter how hard you try, you sometimes just don't register pseudonyms. It's a dead giveaway."

"But what did Dumbledore do, mum?" Harry asked, ignoring his uncles. He wanted answers, not to let them sidetrack the conversation, or he would never know. "You're always on about him, but I don't know _why, _do I?"

Lily sighed. She pulled out her wand and waved it at the ceiling. Nothing happened right away, but she seemed unbothered. "You know what happened to James," she said, matter of fact, because she had made sure of that. Harry let his head tilt a bit, so the frames of his glasses crossed his vision right in front of her eyes. "You know that everyone thought that Sirius was our secret keeper. Dumbledore was the one who set the _fidelius _for us, originally."

"But you changed it," Harry said.

"Yes, but—"

She was cut off by the door opening. Across the kitchen sailed something silvery and formless, what looked to Harry eerily similar to the liquid of a pensive. Lily caught it and for a moment seemed lost in stroking the strange cloth. When Harry tried to lean forward, to get a better look at the runes that seemed to shimmer on the surface, she stood. "The _fidelius _wasn't our only line of defense, of course," she said. As she spoke, she swung the cloth out behind her, and it seemed to wrap around her body—but it was hard to tell, for where it covered, her body disappeared. Harry blinked. It was like looking at a section of a photograph cut out and dropped into another. The edges were impossible, but they still were. That was magic.

"An invisibility cloak?" he asked.

"It's been in James' family for ages," Sirius provided. "You should have seen the trouble we caused…"

"Thank you, Sirius," Lily said harshly, and took it off again. She sat, playing with the cloth in her hands again. "There were several other levels of protection, of course," she continued. "But this was our last line of defense. When Dumbledore set the _fidelius_, James happened to show it to him. He got very peculiar then, and asked if he might borrow it to run some tests on the charms, just for a few days."

"So... it wasn't there on Halloween," said Harry.

"Exactly," said Lily.

"But are you trying to say that was intentional?" Harry asked. "Because I mean, if Dumbledore really wanted You-Know-Who to be able to get to you, then there would have probably been easier ways."

"It doesn't matter whether it was intentional," said his mum. "It does matter that he felt no guilt whatsoever over the fact that he had the cloak."

"Lily, you don't know that for sure," Remus pointed out. "And he did try to apologize."

"Which he doubled up with a plan to use Harry as some sort of pawn for his political schemes!"

"Wait, what?" Harry asked.

Sirius was the one to answer, this time. "Remember the Misitry Gala? Fudge hosted that to get more political support, which Dumbledore was also interested in. He wanted us to raise you in the public eye," he said. "He said it was unfortunate that your life would be like this, but if Lily and you would support him, he could gain more power with the Wizengamot."

"So, what, he could become minister?" Harry asked. He wasn't sure how the elections for Minister for Magic worked, let alone the structure of the Wizengamot, but he was sure they were tied somehow.

"Probably not," his mum said. "No, more likely he would have wanted someone who would go along with his political plans. Dumbledore doesn't like to do things directly, you see. He likes to send other people to do the dirty work, as though he has the right to judge whose life is valuable and whose is not."

Harry took another bite of chow mein, and chewed it slowly, pondering the way his mum was framing the man. "I don't get it," he said at last. "Isn't everyone's goal in politics to get someone whose politics agree with theirs in power?"

"When you give a man like Dumbledore power, he thinks he has an inherent right to use it," said Lily. "He was the head of the Order of the Pheonix, the group that was battling Voldemort. And Harry, I don't mean to paint any one of us as a devil or a saint: it was war, and choices are difficult. Somehow you have to balance protecting those closest to you and trying to fight for the greater good. It's not easy."

She paused long enough to drink more wine, and hurried on, her words becoming rushed onto each other. "Dumbledore lacks caution. You would think, after he lost so many people to poorly timed battles and ill-executed strategies that he would have learned. But he just kept pushing people forward. He doesn't stop to let people breathe…"

"The Finns were first," Sirius said.

"The Finns?"

Remus sighed. His and Sirius' hands had flipped, so his was against the table, and Sirius gave his a squeeze. "They had a little girl," Remus said. "She would have been a few years older than you. But Mrs. Finn was muggle, and Mr. Finn had insulted Bellatrix Lestrange to her face. Dumbledore thought he could use Mr. Finn to provoke her, but…"

Sirius hissed into his wine. "My bitch cousin. She was the one who got Reg in with the bad crowd. And she was the one to get the Longbottoms—not to mention Roberta McKane…"

"The point is," said Lily, "Dumbledore made miscalculations that got people killed, and instead of learning from them, instead of showing any guilt or remorse, he kept sending everyone else charging headfirst into danger, while he was safely behind the lines. Oh, he'd fight if someone cursed him, but no one ever got close enough, did they?"

"So... why is he running Hogwarts, then?" Harry asked. "If he wants political power? I mean, it's a school."

"Young minds are impressionable," said Remus, as though that cleared anything up.

"No matter what, you can't give him any power over you, Harry," Lily said. "Dumbledore has to _believe_ that you are not Harry Potter. And—well, it would be better if you, as Jamie Jeannot, wanted nothing to do with Harry Potter. Obviously, as Sirius' nephew, you would know yourself, like a cousin, maybe. But we don't want to give Dumbledore a reason to try to use you to get to you."

"That makes no sense," Sirius grumbled. "He has to dislike himself so he won't be used against himself?"

"Exactly," said Lily. "There's nothing strange about the concept, what aren't you getting?"

Harry and Sirius shared matching blank looks. "Well," said Remus. "That was the most jumbled use of pronouns I've heard in a while."

"Your sister should be safe," said Lily, carrying on and ignoring his uncles. "We've done very well at making sure no one knows that she exists. If she's Jamies' half-sister, there's absolutely no reason anyone should be interested in her."

"That's just mean," said Sirius. "Of course people have reason to be interested in Holly. She's a wonderful, sweet girl."

"And a brat," Harry muttered, but he agreed with Sirius. When she wasn't being a brat, Holly was much sweeter than most of the girls her age, at least back at the muggle school, and he couldn't imagine anyone being anything _but _interested in her.

"Well, if you do end up being two years ahead of her, I expect you to be keeping an eye out for her," said Lily.

"If?" Sirius asked. "Isn't that the plan?"

"Yes," said Lily, "But if something goes wrong, we'll have to pull Harry out, of course."

Harry blinked, and jabbed at a piece of what was probably tofu. Of course she would have something to hang over his head like that.

"Enough of that!" Remus said suddenly, standing up with a smile. "Harry, would you care for a game of chess?"

"Sure," said Harry, standing up. He hadn't even gotten close to finishing the chow mein, but it wasn't much of a waste, considering the smoky flavor. He carried it to the kitchen proper, dumping the extra into the trash and putting the dish in the washer.

"At this hour?" Lily asked. The wine bottle was nearly empty by now, and she swirled the last of it around the bottom.

"He wasn't out most of the day," Sirius pointed out. "So now's a good a time as any."

"Alright," Lily said dubiously, before downing the rest of the wine and standing up as well. "You should be going back to bed, though."

As Harry walked by to join Remus at the door, Lily reached out to him. Harry flinched away. He didn't want contact with her. He hurried up the stairs as quickly as he could, leaving his mother staring after him.

22.

Holly sat down on the chair her brother favored in the library. She turned, trying to put her legs up over the armrest the way he always did, but she couldn't understand how he thought that was comfortable. It squished her legs up into her stomach and her chin down into her chest, and the armrest did not quite line up with her legs properly when she folded them. She gave up and swiveled, her legs running straight up the back of the chair and her head hanging back down off the front edge of the cushion.

It was just after six thirty. Mum had sent her to the library after dinner, but without Harry it was not that interesting. Unlike her brother, Holly's interest in reading lasted about five minutes before she got bored. Normally, she could pause and pester her brother, but he had to go lock himself in their room, didn't he?

Besides, except for the two bookshelves Harry and Remus had filled, most of the books in the Black library weren't fiction, which meant she was supposed to ask her mum before reading them. But mum was in one of those distracted moods, and that made her unpredictable. When they'd gone out shopping, at the first store it had been useful, because she hadn't looked twice at what Holly was choosing. Normally she'd only let Holly get one t-shirt; this time she'd got _three._ But then at the next store, she'd flat-out rejected a skirt for having sequins on it, and then when the shopkeeper had commented on how cute one of the others she'd chosen, Mum had pulled her out of the store in a rage. So if she asked Mum about reading a book, she might not care, or she might set Holly cleaning her potions lab. Unlike Harry, she wasn't allowed to touch the ingredients, except to scrub them off the floors.

She could play the Nintendo, except like the books it just wasn't as interesting. So instead she flopped over the chair and moped.

No one would tell her _why_ Harry was angry. All she knew was that he'd set off stupid Walpurga for a good half hour while Mum had locked herself in the cellar to get their potions ready, and then when they'd gone shopping she had only said that Harry was throwing a tantrum. Well, that was obvious. Half of London had probably heard him shouting. No, half of Europe. She hadn't seen him that angry since… since…

"Holly," Rem said, sticking head through the door of the library. He looked really tired, but he always looked tired, so it's not like that was odd. "Did you get enough to eat?"

She nodded, then rolled off the chair so she could see him properly. "Is Harry out yet?"

"No," he said, his smile breaking. "But we're going to have a talk with your mum."

"What did she do?" Holly asked. Remus opened his mouth, closed it again, and went back to smiling again. It was a poor apology.

"You'll have to ask Harry later," he said. "It's not really my place…"

"That's stupid," Holly said. She crossed her arms over her chest. "Siri wouldn't tell me either."

"Sorry, Hols."

Remus went away, and Holly pouted some more. But then she got an idea, and crept over to the door. She would have to move very slowly to not creak the stairs, but if her mum and uncles were having a chat, she wanted to hear.

She could hear them by the time she reached the landing outside of their room. She went down to the first mezzanine and stuck her head out through the bars of the railing, leaning forwards so she could see down to the ground floor and open door, and maybe hear a bit better.

"_I'm trying to keep him safe!"_

That was mum. Holly didn't really understand the whole Boy Who Lived thing, because no one would ever explain it to her, and since Harry thought it was all a joke anyhow she couldn't really ask him. All she really knew was that it involved someone called You-Know-Who, which was a useless name because she _didn't_ know who. And somehow it had to do with her dad being dead, and somehow it meant that Harry had to be protected and even though she was Holly Potter she had to go as Holly Jeannot.

"Lily, you can't protect him forever."

She didn't think she'd heard Remus' voice that loud since the time he'd yelled at Harry for jumping off the mezzanine landing. Mum, however, seemed to take it in stride—"He's just a boy, Remus."

"That doesn't mean you can lock him up forever!" Remus shouted. "You can't keep him away from the world. The more you try to hide him, the harder it's going to be, when _he_ returns."

"You think we're just going to stay here?" Mum snapped. "I'm not going to leave my son to be caught up in things. The first sign of change, we're gone, Remus. You know that."

"So you're going to keep him shut away in the mean time, just in case?"

"Lily," Sirius cut in, "Try to be reasonable. He's waited his whole life for this, and James would have—"

"You're _not _his father, Sirius!"

"Well neither are you!"

There was a long silence. Holly leaned as far in as she could, her shoulders pressed up against the bars of the railing, in case they were saying something quiet, but they weren't. It was just silent.

This conversation was doing nothing to clear up her confusion. It was obvious that Sirius wasn't Harry's dad, and it was even more obvious that Mum wasn't. Were they talking about hiding in France—or _Hogwarts? _Yes—that was it—it was obvious, really. Mum didn't want Harry to go to Hogwarts. Why, Holly couldn't imagine—but that had to be it. What else could have possibly made Harry so angry?

The realization hit her with a spark somewhere between dread and relief. _Harry, I don't want you to go. _Well, she was getting her wish, wasn't she? She wouldn't be stuck with just mum and her moods for two years, but Harry would hate her forever, if her wish was to blame…

"Lily," said Remus, breaking the silence. "I—I'm with Sirius. I don't know we knew him better, but we knew James longer, and he would never have kept Harry back. There are charms, and precautions, and _ways_, Lily. You think we don't want him safe? You think I don't understand?"

_Let him go,_ Holly thought as fiercely as she could. Maybe she couldn't do magic the way Harry could, and maybe none of them listened to her but just this once—_Let him go!_

"Fine," Lily said. Her voice was shrill. "Fine! You want him to go to that—that _place_ so bad? Fine. Can you promise me he'll be safe?"

"Lily—"

"Can you?"

Sirius was the one to answer. "You give the kid too little credit. He's your son, and James'. He'll make it work. You want him to go as James? He'll go as James. You want him to hide under the cloak and go to school as the invisible kid? _He'll make it work._"

"He'll go as James, if he goes at all," Mum says. Holly can barely hear it, turning her whole body to squeeze a little more. If she were Harry, she'd find a way to magic her way forward, but he was the one who could find a way to do anything he wanted. She was with Sirius: Harry could handle—whatever it was Mum wanted of him. He always had.

"Fine," said Sirius.

"And you'll take time out of your evenings to talk to him about being undercover, Remus."

"Me? I'm not sure—"

"Remus."

"Of course, Lily, but—"

"And you'll convince him that it's important?"

"Why me?"

"He listens to you. If you had told him he couldn't go—there would be none of this."

"I would never tell him that. There's always a way, Lily. _Dumbledore _proved that to me."

There was another long silence, then Sirius said—"I'll go tell him, then."

"Fine," said Lily.

Holly's breath caught, and she tried to pull her head back, but her chin hit the bars. Sirius came out through the door and seemed to look up at her right away. He stared for a moment, but his hard face broke into a slight smile, and he waved his hand slightly. "There's still some of dinner left, right? He's probably hungry."

Whatever the response was, Holly didn't hear it, because she was too busy extracting her head and running back up the stairs. At least it was Sirius, not Remus, she thought as she fell back into the chair. Remus would have told Mum, but Sirius would keep quiet. After a moment, she turned on the TV and Nintendo, just in time for Remus to pass the door on his way back up.

So Harry would go to Hogwarts, she thought, heart beating fast as it sank. He would leave her behind, all alone in the manor in France, the ocean between them only more literal than the ocean between Holly and the rest of the world.

She swallowed the feeling that was choking up her throat, and started a new game. Two years, then she could go to school herself. She'd prove it—she didn't need him, if he didn't need her. He was only her brother.

* * *

><p>Less of a roller-coaster ride this time, perhaps?<p>

Thank you all for keeping up with this story, and I'm glad you're enjoying it. Unfortunately, this marks the point where my updating schedule is going to get a bit less consistent. I'm going to aim to update at least every other week, what with finals and, after that, the mad dash to apply for internships, and hopefully at some points it will come after only one week, but I may have to take a hiatus if the school/work/writing overlap is too much. I will try to update on Sundays still, since that seems to be working for me.

Thank you all so much. Until next time!


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